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THAT WHICH IS PASSED 


BY THE SAME A UTHOR 


THE NEW WORLD 
THE CAPTIVE HERD 




tHAT WHICH IS 
PASSED 


By 


G. MURRAY £TKIN 


Author of “The New World," and “The 
Captive Herd ” 


NEW YORK 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 







Copyright, 1923, 

By THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY 


y 


Printed in the United States of America 


oci -3 m'i ^ 

0 

©C1A759228 


To 

JULIET CARLETON 
With a Friend's 
Appreciation 




©ob requtvetb 
tbat wbtcb ts passes 


CONTENTS 


Nemesis 

Wind and Rain 


Peter Magdalen 




























» f 
















/ 



















V 














PART I 


NEMESIS 



♦ 


» 9 










That Which Is Passed 


CHAPTER I 

The dawn was feeling its way through the 
darkness of the Paris streets as the boat train 
from Cherbourg drew into the Gare St. La- 
zare. Windows were thrown down and heads 
peered hurriedly into the station in search of 
porters, but because of the early hour only a 
few were available, so in despair of securing 
one of the few, heads were drawn back again, 
having resolved to carry their own bags. Sir 
Jocelyn Gilchrist stood in the door of his com¬ 
partment and with a deliberate gesture re¬ 
placed the five-franc tip in his pocket as he 
said to his wife: 

“ We shall have to find our own taxi.” 

Lady Gilchrist rose slowly. It was not 
only that they had been travelling all night in 


4 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

a train that had no “ wagon-lit,” but her move¬ 
ments were slow like the movements of a per¬ 
son who has lived an unhurried life in sur¬ 
roundings of a certain importance. She 
stretched herself a moment, then she took her 
jewel case from the rack above her head. 

The face revealed in the mixed light of the 
“ veilleuse ” and the light from the station was 
the face of a woman nearing fifty, which still 
preserved the elements of great beauty. Its 
shape was exquisite. The coloring was dark. 
Dark lashes drooped over dark eyes. And 
whether it was the mixed light, or the hour, the 
expression was as charming and mysterious as 
when dawn passes her light fingers over the 
face of night. 

Sir John, taking two bags, made his way to 
the door at the end of the corridor and she fol¬ 
lowed him. The passengers from the boat 
train alighted. To be more explicit, the boat 
train disgorged itself, forced from its shelter 
the travellers committed to its care. On the 
platform faces seen on deck, on the high seas, 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 5 

seen rocking on the tender, seen again claiming 
baggage on the dock appeared for a moment 
and then passed once more upon their way. 
Outside the station Sir John chose a taxi, 
opened the door for his wife, handed in the two 
bags and saying “ Hotel de Crillon ” to the 
driver got in beside her and banged the door. 

Lady Gilchrist turned to him. 

“ I thought we were going to the Ritz.” 

“ I marconied the Ritz and wired the Crillon 
from Cherbourg. We shall get in somewhere. 
I thought we would try the Crillon first. 
Shall I put your jewel case down? ” he asked 
stretching out his hand. 

“ No, thanks. I like holding it.” 

They passed the Hotel Terminus and took 
the rue du Havre, and already that ecstatic 
elation which comes to everyone in Paris com¬ 
municated itself to Lady Gilchrist. There 
were few people in the streets. The dawn was 
breaking with but here and there some pedes¬ 
trian, some late watcher of the night, with his 
collar turned up pursuing his way home. 


6 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

Their taxi came to the back of the Madeleine 
and passing it went down the rue Royal, and 
as they came out on the Place de la Concorde 
drew up in front of the Crillon. 

Sir Jocelyn opened the taxi door and got 
out. 

“ Stay here,” he said, “ until I see if they 
have rooms.” 

She watched him ring the night bell and 
when the door was opened by the night porter 
he disappeared. She turned and her eye fell 
on the Obelisk of Luxor. And she remem¬ 
bered vaguely that it was near this spot— 
about half-way between the Obelisk and the 
Statue of Strasbourg—that the guillotine was 
set up during the Reign of Terror. Beyond, 
the Seine and the Pont de la Concorde were 
hardly visible, because a mist obscured them. 
One of those mists that lies upon Paris when 
the dawn is rising. 

Lady Gilchrist sat watching, where so much 
of the beauty and finery of the world have 
passed, waiting for her husband. 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 7 

The door opened and Sir Jocelyn came out, 
followed by a gesticulating porter. 

“ They cannot take us in,” he said angrily. 
“ It seems no telegrams are delivered after 
nine o’clock. We will go to the Ritz. They 
will have got my marconi from the ship.” 

Across the Place de la Concorde from the 
direction of the Seine a figure was emerging 
from the mist. The figure of a young man 
with his hands in his pockets, his soft hat pulled 
a little over his eyes. Lady Gilchrist watched 
him; he was tall and thin and walked with a 
careless grace, his chin in the air. 

Sir Jocelyn got in beside her and shut the 
door. 

“ Hotel Ritz,” he said, “ Place Vendome.” 

Lady Gilchrist’s eyes were fixed on the fig¬ 
ure emerging from the mist. It left the curb 
to cross the rue de Rivoli. Sir Jocelyn fol¬ 
lowing her gaze leaned forward. 

“ Do you know who that is? ” he said. 

Lady Gilchrist did not answer until their 
taxi had passed. 


8 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 


“ No,” she asked; “ who is it? ” 

“ That,” answered Sir Jocelyn, “ was Peter 
Magdalen.” 


CHAPTER II 

Between les Grands Boulevards, and that 
portion of the Seine which surrounds the lie 
de la Cite, is a small old-fashioned narrow 
street. The sightseer is struck at first by the 
dilapidated air of the houses, but as he looks 
deeper here and there remain signs, that from 
these houses a hundred and thirty years ago, 
people of wealth and importance came and 
went in the days when Josephine was endeav¬ 
oring to give to the new republic a little of the 
charm of the old aristocracy. 

The days of importance for these houses are 
gone, and the arms of the Sevigne, the bust 
of a Rohan Soubise in a niche in the stone, the 
tracery of some carved door, deepen the im¬ 
pression of unreality and give a charm and ten¬ 
der sadness to a reality which is to-dav sordid 
and in bad repair. Just as in painting that 

figure is not good which does not express the 
9 


10 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

gestures of the soul, so an interesting street 
keeps here and there the signs of the life which 
has passed through it. Could these houses 
speak, they would say, “ A builder built me 
and then a craftsman touched me with his 
wand.” It may have been the touch of the 
craftsman to the shell of rough-stone work 
that gave Pere Formol at first sight a sense 
of satisfaction and induced him to take the 
ground floor shop of number fifty-one. Num¬ 
ber fifty-one had a stone fresco into which the 
workman had put something over and above 
the work of his hands. To go from the shop 
to the first floor it was necessary to pass under 
the archway along the passage to the stone 
steps leading up. A tumbled-down sinister 
house at night with vague figures that leaned 
into the darkness from their balconies, sounds 
of steps upon the stone, doors opened and shut 
and bolts drawn. In this street to-day there 
is something greasy, a smear of eating and 
drinking, and the narrow pavement which 
often\compels pedestrians to walk in the road- 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 11 


way suggest the horrid reality of these narrow 
uncomfortable lives. To-day when Pere 
Formol goes to the Cafe for his dinner, his 
hair is white under his black soft brimmed hat; 
twenty years ago when the neighbors first 
nodded together over his appearance his hair 
had been black. “Who was he? What was 
his business? What was he doing there? ” 
These were a few of the questions they asked 
among themselves. Madame Paul in partic¬ 
ular observed him with immense persistence, 
but Madame Paul was a young woman then 
and Monsieur Paul had just married her and 
brought her home. Monsieur and Madame 
Paul lived immediately opposite to fifty-one. 
They were the proprietors of the Restaurant 
de l’Empereur, a small restaurant whose chief 
business was done in the evening. Underneath 
the sign “ Restaurant de l’Empereur ” was 
written “ Pale Ale and White Bread,” and 
upon the glass “ Billiards.” Next door to 
Madame Paul was “ Taneyre ” the fish shop, 
with the sign “ Cuisson des homards tous les 


12 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 


jours.” The fish shop displayed on the trestles 
put into the street in the daytime baskets of 
cockles set amongst the ferns, merchandise 
from Les Halles. 

On the evening of the day Pere Formol first 
appeared in his shop, Madame Taneyre and 
Madame Paul said to each other: 

“ Who is he? ” 

“ I don’t know.” 

“ What does he do? ” 

“ He does engraving on steel, or silver.” 

“ What does the landlord say? ” 

“ He has paid the first month in advance. 
He has lived in England. Some furniture is 
coming and the rest he will buy.” 

“ Has he clients? ” 

“ No, but he will wait. He has gold in the 
bas de laine. If necessary, he can pay two 
months in advance.” 

For twenty years these women had observed 
the outward gestures of Pere Formol’s life. 
They saw him come down the passage and un¬ 
lock the door of his shop at nine. At twelve 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 13 


he locked his shop and went again to his rooms 
overhead. At one he returned and stayed until 
six. After spending some time up-stairs, he de¬ 
scended and made his way to a Cafe in the 
Palais Royal. This was the regular fashion 
of his external life. His clients were few, and 
for the most part men. And no scrutiny could 
obtain a clue to his most carefully guarded 
personality. His tall figure was slightly bent; 
perhaps he had contracted the habit by bend¬ 
ing over his work. His thick white hair grew 
carelessly. The hollows in his face which was 
beginning to age showed all the more plainly 
on account of the high cheek bones. Only his 
eyes gave an unpleasing expression. Was it 
some vicious tendency, or genius which gave 
him a slovenly expression? After watching 
him for twenty years, his neighbors could not 
say. French people will work very hard to 
get on and his neighbors could not understand 
why Pere Formol did not seek customers, see¬ 
ing the little on which the comforts of his life 
seemed to depend. 


14 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

And yet during the last ten years Pere 
Formol had three or four times received one 
visitor who aroused the curiosity of his neigh¬ 
bors. 

Once in a carriage and three times in a smart 
motor, a lady had come to visit him. The car¬ 
riage, the motor might have belonged to some 
private owner, or might have been one of those 
private conveyances taken over by the garage 
of some fashionable hotel. The neighbors had 
long grown accustomed to the slowness of 
Pere Formol’s work, but even a mathematical 
allowance for the slowness of his actions could 
not allow for the length of these visits. 

“ That motor has stood there two hours,” 
said Madame Paul. Madame Taneyre 
nodded. She had come out of her shop to ar¬ 
range the lobsters more tastefully upon the 
ferns. 

“ The lady has time to waste,” she replied. 
Her views of passing events were influenced 
by her own attitude. She had not been estab¬ 
lished so long as Madame Paul. She was 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 15 

forced therefore to stick very closely to busi¬ 
ness. 

“ I thought because of her appearance,” 
Madame Paul nodded in the direction of the 
motor, “ it must be business, but you could buy 
everything he has in an hour; it can therefore 
not be business.” 

They both gazed for a moment at the little 
shop. 

“ It cannot be Pere Formol. He is not 
young,” said Madame Taneyre. 

“ She too is not too young,” said Madame 
Paul. “ Of course he was young once.” 

The Parisian loves decoration, loves it more 
effusively than any other citizen, but under¬ 
neath, the Parisian insists that there must be 
life. They saw, or thought they saw, the ar¬ 
rangement, the decoration in the life of Pere 
Formol. And returning to their idea again 
and again, they tried to piece together some 
strange and shivering facts that would give 
them an inkling of the life beneath. 


CHAPTER III 


Pere Formol, as he had come to be called 
in the quarter, was not a Frenchman. Fie was 
the son of an Englishman in whom a subtle 
love of painting and appreciation of literature 
were united at certain periods of his life with 
a strong strain of sensuality. Pere Formol’s 
mother was a French dancer. Her day of 
glory was short. It corresponded with one of 
Locker Collins’s efforts to work conscientiously 
at his painting. It ended with his return upon 
himself; his dead-weight gravitation to the 
least appreciable aspect of his character. It 
was in his worst aspect that he did not pursue 
the formality of going through the marriage 
ceremony with Marie Rosa. 

The instincts of the uneducated when com¬ 
bined with the slack rein of behavior can never 
come to have more than the very slightest value 

in the determination of our standards. Marie 
16 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 17 


Rosa did not lay much stress upon the cere¬ 
mony. She was chiefly concerned with the in¬ 
terruption of her career and the advent of her 
son. She called him “ Childs,” meaning the 
English of “ enfant,” but her pronunciation 
and the adding of the letter s made it sound 
like Giles. This his male parent finally con¬ 
tracted to Gilly. Such was his christening, his 
baptism into the world. When he ceased to 
appear as Gilly Collins, he became Pere 
Formol. 

Ignoring that among the duties required of 
the modern husband and father is the necessity 
of a permanent domicile, or failing that of a 
certain regularity of income enabling him to 
procure a changing one, Locker Collins 
worked, or not, as the mood rode him. And 
with the years the mood to idleness rode him 
more frequently. It was the more deplorable 
as a slight form of increasing pthisis was im¬ 
pairing the attractions of Marie Rosa. If she 
procured the chance of a “ turn ” at the Palace, 
or she was taken on at the Empire, ill luck 


18 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

pursued her, for some reason, the “ turn ” had 
no appreciable duration. 

And yet in spite of his vicissitudes Locker 
Collins was a name very well known in a cer¬ 
tain set, very well known to a certain lot of 
Londoners in his day. He was one of those 
men sought out by writers and artists who, 
though incapable of achieving success them¬ 
selves, are a fund of information for the other 
members of the fraternity. He could tell just 
what was needed in a halting unfinished pic¬ 
ture. He could say the word that would pull 
a rehearsing play into shape. And although 
he had not behaved like a gentleman, he had 
been born one and the manner clung in a de¬ 
gree. 

In this precarious artistic atmosphere, 
young Gilly grew up. Art was much men¬ 
tioned, in his environment, but a man’s attitude 
to his God, those considerations which one man 
should render to another, were treated as 
empty conventions and ignored. 

When Gilly’s intermittent schooling was at 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 19 

an end, Locker Collins found himself in the 
lucky estate of having sold several pictures, 
besides having been appointed temporary art 
critic for one of the weeklies. This combina¬ 
tion of luck sent young Gilly to Oxford for a 
year. This year was like a gift of God. Fate 
said, “ I will give you one year streaked with 
light and ever after you shall walk in dark¬ 
ness.” It was his day of open things, of liv- 
ing joyously in a golden moment. The river, 
the narrow drifting water, the “ quad,” the 
sunset, the playing fields, were gifts that by 
heredity were not his. Gilly Collins had them 
for one year. It was his high-water mark, his 
zenith ere life went rotting to its end. 

We remember extraordinarily vivid 
glimpses of peoj)le, moments when they escape 
from themselves and walk abroad as if some 
great vitality bore them along; and we remem¬ 
ber these glimpses quite apart from the pro¬ 
portion of their interest to us. Years after¬ 
ward when events had dug up old days, Sir 
Percy Boscawen remembered seeing Gilly Col- 


20 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

lins walk down the High with Lady Mary 

Boscawen. 

“ The beggar must have been about 
twenty,” he said, “ and Mary can’t have been 
more than eighteen. She went away I re¬ 
member for nearly two years after that.” This 
fact flowed up from the memories of the past, 
this witness that at Oxford Gilly Collins had 
his hour. It shone in him ere the waters flowed 
back on their long downward course. Perhaps 
it followed that his father’s inability to give 
him another year at Magdalen blotted out the 
brightness. 

The canons of the English rule of upbring¬ 
ing were broken and their breaking checked 
him, diverted the flow his life might have 
taken. 

Among his father’s friends was a man called 
Varducci, an Italian painter turned engraver 
and with a mind to revive some old process of 
silver laid on copper, Gilly Collins apprenticed 
himself to this man, thinking that if they could 
evolve this process to their own content they 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 21 

would make a success. Not realizing that suc¬ 
cess is a matter for the populace to determine 
and that there has never been a time, or a 
country where the populace has wanted 
beauty. 

Varducci was a man interested in the earlier 
works of Botticelli and their characteristically 
Renaissance ideal. Like Botticelli, Varducci 
wished to create a new antiquity of his own. 
He combined a curious indifference with a cer¬ 
tain curiosity. He was not a Christian, he was 
Pagan with a Paganism that troubled all his 
work, until with the years his designs hard¬ 
ened and lost the beauty of their decoration. 
With time he lowered his key when putting his 
thoughts into form. To deepen the impression 
of Varducci’s influence, it is only necessary to 
insist upon two points. His rigid attachment 
to a form of art, that had little chance of ap¬ 
peal, and a cynicism that was the result of fail¬ 
ure. He let himself into each day by a low 
crooked door. It was necessary for him 
to bend to pass through it; he never straight- 


22 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 
ened up and took a breath of God’s good 
air. 

When Gilly Collins had worked with him 
for a time, a period long enough for him to 
absorb his master’s attitude, they quarrelled 
and Gilly left, drifted about until he finally 
settled in number fifty-one. 

There are many sorts of lives in the world. 
Before he settled in Paris he had had many 
experiences. From the days when he swag¬ 
gered down the High at Oxford, until his in¬ 
stallation at fifty-one, life had made to him 
some strange and ardent appeals. The part 
of him that was Bohemian understood the un¬ 
dercurrents of Bohemia far too well. And 
just after his year at Oxford he showed a 
strange and intense hatred of Bohemia. Then 
suddenly driven by what impulse his friends 
did not know, in spite of his crude aversion and 
his openly expressed dislike of it, he returned 
to Bohemia, choosing her and study with 
Varducci as against some orthodox career. 

In the first days of his sojourn in Paris, life 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 23 


was like a dream, he thought. The great gar¬ 
goyles of Notre Dame looked down across the 
sluggish movement of the Seine, as against its 
quays the barges crept noiselessly for anchor¬ 
age. Sometimes after dining at the Cafe in 
the Palais Royal, he walked along the bank, 
watching the drifting, changing life of the nar¬ 
row river. A Paque boat moving hurriedly. 
Here and there a stray fisherman, throwing 
in a line. A child’s washing, flapping on a 
string on the deck of a barge. A man and a 
woman seated on the ledge of the opposite 
bank with between them a hunk of bread and 
a litre of wine, and Notre Dame, its great 
carved doors closed for the night. All this 
Gilly Collins saw on those evenings before he 
turned and retraced his steps through the nar¬ 
row cabbage-smelling streets that led home. 


CHAPTER IV 

A little wind blew the candle on Pere 
Formol’s table. 

He had lighted it that he might see the trac¬ 
ing of a line. He looked up. The wind came 
from the door which was partly open. He 
nodded in its direction and put the magnify¬ 
ing glass which he had the moment before re¬ 
moved back in his right eye. 

“ You, eh? ” he said as with a jerky move¬ 
ment he took up his design. His face was pale 
and sullen, and a pipe drooped from the corner 
of his mouth. It did not hide altogether its 
contemptuous expression. 

Peter Magdalen came in—a light coat over 
his arm and a soft hat in his hand. He put the 
coat and hat on a chair. 

Pere Formol was sitting by a table on which 
lay a number of books. He removed the mag¬ 
nifying glass, placed it beside one of the books 

and kept touching it with his long sallow 
24 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 25 


fingers. He glanced at his visitor. As he 
looked at his youth, his good looks, his attrac¬ 
tive comeliness, it seemed as though a sour 
thought poisoned Pere Formol’s expression. 
An envious evil thought, that clouded the tex¬ 
ture of his mind. 

He hardly understood his own jealousy. 
The jealousy of age for youth. A sort of rage 
possessed him at the physical well-being of 
Peter Magadalen’s poise. He tried to 
straighten up his own shoulders, but the bent 
back had grown accustomed to its curve. He 
wished he could lay hands on this young body 
and tear the youth out of it. 

“ Have you come round? ” he said. 

“Round?” 

“ To my way of thinking.” 

“ No, of course not.” 

Peter Magdalen said it without any inten¬ 
sity, quite simply. Youth wants to follow its 
own course. Looking straight down at Pere 
Formol, Peter’s eyes seemed to deny the pos¬ 
sibility of any other action. 


26 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

Pere Formol’s face now had an expression 
of anger. 

“ You are really not consistent/’ he said. 
“It is no use my advising you. You won’t 

listen.” 

He stopped. He felt the uselessness of his 
argument. “ Well? ” he said after a moment. 

“ I don’t want consistency, I want life,” said 
Peter. “ Something fluid and changing day 
by day.” 

“ You pretend to an appreciation of art,” 
said Pere Formol, with a sort of almost ruth¬ 
less obstinacy. “ You pretend—and then you 
lead a life of sport.” 

“ Why not? ” asked Peter. “ Besides, avia¬ 
tion is not sport. It is one branch of warfare.” 

Before Pere Formol had time to reply, 
Peter seated himself on the edge of the table 
and lighted a cigarette. A characteristic poise 
of this young aviator, representative of his 
character, so positive, so unshaded, so simple 
with its charming and graceful naturalness. 
This sufficiency, this quality of “ open airi- 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 27 

ness,” struck the artist in Pere Formol and 
again he envied him. Peter’s face bore the 
expression of a man whose thoughts are like 
white birds, darting and alighting along a 
flowery way. Combined with this brightness 
was the calm, assured unquestioning beauty of 
the flesh. As he looked did Pere Formol re¬ 
member Gilly Collins when in the hope of 
youth he walked down the Oxford “ High ”? 

“ Very well,” he said firmly. “ Be a sports¬ 
man, but pretend no love for art; spare her 
that.” 

A little dashed Peter answered: 

“ But a man may take an interest in more 
than one thing.” 

“ Not if he is an artist. The curve of arts’ 
course must be sought unremittingly and 
sought alone.” 

To himself Peter said: “ If he were a little 
younger, I would give him a try out with the 
gloves and then take him for a run in the sun.” 
He looked at Pere Formol’s mocking eyes and 
guessed the blackness in his heart. He saw 


28 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

the man before him black coated, knees crossed, 
his pipe in his hand, trying to tie his, Peter’s, 
youth to an artistic apprenticeship, angry be¬ 
cause this youth evaded him. 

“ Life is dying out of him,” Peter thought; 
“ he is growing old and it is making him bit¬ 
ter.” And yet he felt the kindred attraction 
of him who had only himself to rely on in the 
world, and who realized his own courage and 
his own strength; besides he had freedom, the 
liberty to suffer in his own way. And suffer 
he did; it was the feeling of his suffering that 
made Peter gentle with him. 

“ Life lasts,” said Pere Formol, “ according 
as the flame burns rapidly, or slowly. The 
force stored in our systems is not great enough 
to steal one guarded secret, to make one great 
effect, unless we give all to its pursuit. You, 
Peter, you are so young, so strong, if you were 
to study under me, to learn the ways, you 
might carry on what I have begun and together 
we might accomplish something that has not 
been done before.” 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 29 

Was it really fame he longed for? Peter 
looked at him, wondering. Pere Formol’s 
eyes were really bright with enthusiasm, but 
they were crafty. And in his face was a subtle 
contradiction of the loftiness of his words. 

Pere Formol sat for a moment in silence; he 
believed he had made an impression with his 
argument, but in Peter’s heart pity grew. He 
felt that when he left, Pere Formol must miss 
him, not as a man specially adapted for the 
artistic pursuit, but because he brought the 
human element into a very lonely life. 

Pere Formol looked at his pipe. 

“ It has always seemed to me,” he said, 
“ that in the artistic life concentration is half 
the battle.” 

“ Concentration on one form of expression.” 

“Exactly. Living for it, putting every¬ 
thing else out of your mind.” 

“ I dare say you are right.” 

Pere Formol brightened. 

“ I am glad you think so. Now if you would 
just give up your flying. You are a boy with 


80 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 


any amount of intelligence. Any amount. A 
real gift for absorbing ideas easily. Art will 
prove it, up to the hilt. Give up ‘ flying ’ and 
seek her, Peter.” The sense of something be¬ 
hind this grew in Peter. Pere Formol was not 
speaking frankly. He wanted to tie him 
down. His heart hardened. 

Finally Peter said: 

“ Just wdiat will I get out of it? What fu¬ 
ture is there in it? A chap must think of that, 
you know. Look here,” he said, “ is there any 
other reason why you are so keen for me to 
come? ” 

Pere Formol sniffed. There was a warp to 
him. Would the boy guess it? 

“ You can’t expect it, at my age,” went on 
Peter. “ To give up flying through the clouds 
and button myself in an old frock coat and sit 
hunched up scraping away on steel.” 

“ The war is over. Flying is not needed.” 

“ That is what I came to tell you,” said 
Peter. “ I have got an appointment at the 
Embassy here, just office work, but my knowl- 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 31 


edge of France is needed. It is not a big plum, 
but it is jolly, quite jolly.” 

Pere Formol opened his lips. His anger 
overcame his usual suavity. “ You are so 
damned lucky,” he said. 

The fish was swimming away from him in 
clear water. 

Two hours later Pere Formol, stirring in his 
chair, put his designs away in the flat drawer 
of his desk and prepared to stop work for the 
night. He settled his papers on the top of 
the table, knocked the ashes out of his pipe and 
put it on a tray, then he took down from a peg 
behind the door a black felt hat, smoothed it 
with the sleeve of his coat, and buttoned his 
coat, giving it a little pull down from the 
shoulders by its tails. He took the key of the 
shop door out of his pocket as he went into 
the street. Pere Formol never missed that 
daily walk to the Cafe in the Palais Royal. 
Sometimes he took his umbrella, sometimes he 
left it at home, but rain or shine, the neighbors, 
if they looked out of the window, were sure to 


32 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 


see, sometime between six and eight in the 
evening, Pere Formol open the door of his 
shop, close it behind him, lock it with his key, 
turn the handle to make sure it was fastened 
and then walk down the street in the direction 
of the Palais Royal. A man of fifty has gen¬ 
erally acquired some definite habits of life. 

When he got to the restaurant, he gave his 
hat and umbrella to the “ chasseur.” He then 
went to a table in the corner. Sometimes he 
nodded to Golain, the engraver, and they 
played a game of dominoes as they drank their 
coffee. On other evenings when Golain 
nodded to him, he would shake his head surlily 
and Golain, deprived of his game of dominoes, 
would say: 

“ His mother gave birth to him in a bad 
hour.” 

The evening of Peter’s visit when Golain 
nodded Pere Formol shook his head. And 
soon after, before his usual time, he called the 
“ chasseur,” took his hat and umbrella and 
went out. The feeling which possessed him 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 33 


that evening dominated him and would not let 
him play a friendly game. His thoughts 
darted back to that boy—Peter; to the thought 
of this new success of his, to the luck that 
prowled about him. He had wanted to bind 
Peter to himself—apprentice him. For a long 
time he had given up his own career. The sane 
and simple creed of a just reward for his own 
work was gone from him. He had lapsed and 
he had ebbed, but it was not that he had ful¬ 
filled his purpose and quieted down. His con¬ 
science did not prick him, that his chief emo¬ 
tion was a melancholy craving in his heart for 
revenge, and revenge for a wrong of his own 
doing. Through the Paris night he walked 
home thinking—thinking. His face was tense, 
and his eyes had a mocking look. He thought 
of the expression: “ You have made your bed, 
you must lie on it.” Having become a victim, 
one must remain a victim. Never. The life 
was going out of him, but he would fight. 
Make himself felt yet. He arrived at his own 
door. Instead of going up-stairs as was his 


34 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

custom in the evening, he took out his key and 
let himself into the shop. He lighted his light, 
put his umbrella in the corner, hung his hat on 
the peg and sat down at the table where he 
worked all day. 

“ It’s all Peter now,” he said to himself, 
“ and the bad luck follows me—why? I don’t 
know at all.” He brooded in this fashion for 
several minutes. “ Peter thinks his ‘ getting 
on ’ is due to his own prowess; he doesn’t know 
she is behind him.” And again, “ People only 
track the evil, they do not cure it.” The shapes 
formed and went in his mind, shapes of dark¬ 
ness and blackness. The great wrench years 
ago. That had turned him down the wrong 
path. “ Life was like this, was it? ” He must 
try to see into the future. Suddenly the mock¬ 
ing expression left his eyes. 

“ If the only way to hurt her is through 
Peter, then I must hurt Peter,” he said slowly. 

He heard the bells of St. Roch’s striking 


nine. 


CHAPTER V 

Peter Magdalen had had rather a strange 
upbringing. He was a ward, his mother and 
father being dead, his income coming to him 
from the law firm of Summers, Merryfield and 
Brand. As a child, until he was nine years of 
age, he had been in the care of his “ nourrice,” 
a woman who adored him, who loved him as 
much as she loved her own little girl of his 
age. Her home was at that time on the coast 
of Brittany, and it was undoubtedly those 
years, when he ran barefoot on the sands, that 
gave Peter his foundation of glorious health. 
It was those years that gave him a sea-magic, 
which seemed to go no deeper than the reflec¬ 
tion of the sea in his eyes, but which revealed 
itself in a strong simplicity of character, a 
quality of faith that was as unknown as it was 
unswerving. He had from the sun and the 

water that animal content that makes it pos- 
35 


36 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 
sible to be happy in the moment without inquir¬ 
ing too much into the future. 

Across the jagged peaks of the islands near 
the shore he saw the sun set, and although it 
meant no more to him than that it was time 
to go home and have his supper, he got an 
absolute, an ingenious vision of something tak¬ 
ing place outside the realm of human endeavor. 

“ Na-Na,” he would ask, “ where does the 
sun go at night? ” 

“ Home,” replied the old peasant, “ home to 
God.” 

He watched the sea-birds picking their way 
among the seaweed left by the tide, as they 
searched for food. He saw the brown fisher¬ 
men coming home with their nets upon their 
shoulders. He saw the slender masts of the 
fishing boats bend beneath their rigging, and 
in the traffic of the ocean the steam of a liner, 
or the dip of a brown sail. And although he 
was too young for the realization of life to 
come to him, he was happy and he grew sturdy 
and strong. 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 37 

When he was nine years old, a small, clean¬ 
shaven little man of the legal profession ap¬ 
peared from England. He announced that 
he had come to take Peter back to school. His 
old nurse cried and dried her eyes with the 
corner of her apron. 

“Do we go by sail or by steam?” asked 
Peter. 

“We take the night steamboat from St. 
Malo to Southampton.” 

“ I shall come back in the holidays,” he said 
to his nurse. He had often watched the steam¬ 
boats, but he had never been in one before. 

Brand of the firm of Summers, Merryfield 
and Brand, was a bachelor. He had been 
chosen by the firm to go for Peter, because he 
had no family ties. It was more easy for him 
to go than for the others. 

When they arrived in London, Brand was 
under instructions to take him to a private 
school in Surrey. In the heading of the pro¬ 
spectus of the school it boasted, “ The charac¬ 
teristics of each boy are individually studied.” 


38 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

Brand was glad to give Peter into the care 
of the Head Master and go back to his lodg¬ 
ings in the Temple. 

On his years at Highgate it is not neces¬ 
sary to dwell. He came out from it eventually 
with the hall-mark of the English schoolboy 
well stamped on him. His eyes were blue. 
His cheeks were rosy and his hair was like 
pulled molasses toffee. 

All this led up to Oxford, and then sud¬ 
denly England went to war. And Peter, re¬ 
membering the seagulls flying over the sea¬ 
gulls on the coast of Brittany, went to train 
for the aviation service. 

At this juncture Brand reappeared. 

“ You ought to finish your year at Oxford,” 
he said. “ The war will be a long thing. 
There will be plenty of time then.” Without 
exactly saying so Peter got the idea that it 
was thought by someone he had better finish 
his year at Oxford. 

“ By whom? ” asked Peter. 

Brand stammered and seemed confused. 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 39 


<c Oh, nobody in particular. That is nobody 
especially.” 

“ Then nobody does not matter. I shall go 
now,” answered Peter, and no argument of 
Brand’s could shake him. 

It was then he came to Paris. His knowl¬ 
edge of French made him of value for some 
special work. His old nurse Na-Na had mar¬ 
ried again and she and her husband were acting 
as concierges in the building where Pere 
Formol had his shop. So Peter became a 
tenant in number fifty-one. 

There are moments in life which are ominous 
with fate. It is all very well to put oneself out¬ 
side fate and above it; it always comes, in the 
end, to take the toll of its own pleasure. In 
spite of the superficiality which entered into 
the sentiment of his artistic creations, Pere 
Formol clung to one or two incidents in his 
life with a tenacity which could not have been 
exceeded by a more sincere and successful man. 
Life was to him a tragedy, but a tragedy in 
which his own part was to stand silently in the 


40 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

wings until the curtain was pulling down on 
what he looked to be the final act. The record 
of this attitude was one of the strongest reve¬ 
lations of the prime emotion which lay at the 
root of his character. For twenty-one years he 
had known just where Na-Na was and how 
she was occupied. It was his letter that made 
her the offer of a post in Paris, and before he 
took the trouble to go to the landlord, and ask 
for the position, he had been perfectly sure in 
his own mind that she would accept it. 

To say that it was a part of Pere Formol’s 
plan to have Na-Na as concierge at fifty-one 
is in a measure an exaggeration, but he was 
accustomed to keep track of her, because she 
knew the news of Peter and it was not too 
much to say that he considered her a valuable 
link. Youth went on its way like a butterfly 
chasing the sun and age watched it with the 
coil of jealousy and revenge in its heart. To 
Peter unsuspecting, life was a race through a 
copse, or a dawdle along some summer way. 

Although when he took up his abode at fifty- 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 41 
one for the sake of being near his old nurse, 
Peter did not know Pere Formol very well, 
he did know him, because once or twice Pere 
Formol had spent his holidays as a lodger in 
Na-Na’s little house on the coast of Brittany. 
Peter had been secretly irritated by his cyn¬ 
icism, but that same cynicism insisting that it 
knew life well enough to despise it was in a 
way an attraction. Then came the years in 
England, and then the war and Paris and 
there was Pere Formol again in Peter’s circle. 

Pere Formol and Peter became friends. 
Pere Formol professed a liking for Peter, was 
very charming to him and persistently spoke of 
Peter’s aptitude for art. And although they 
were so different Peter liked him, because he 
recognized Pere Formol was not only alone, 
but old and alone, and this combination aroused 
his chivalry. Pere Formol had reached a stage 
which had been gained by the balked tortuous¬ 
ness of his own character. Already he had 
ceased to look for gentleness and kindness in 
others, already he had no wish to bestow af- 


42 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

fection, kindness, or even a mild consideration. 
He sought nothing, he gave nothing. Some 
day this would make him suffer. 

Peter had seen old Formol go out evening 
after evening to take his solitary dinner. 
Evening after evening he had seen him come in 
and go alone to his two rooms on the first floor. 
There was something about him, about his look, 
attitude and manner that in spite of his caustic 
independence moved Peter to pity. And yet 
when he sat with him in his workshop, or went 
to smoke a pipe in the little salon, Peter could 
not love him, because there was a quality in 
Pere Formol that arrested affection in those 
with whom he came in contact. 

Pere Formol’s pressure upon him was very 
definite. He practically sought Peter out. 
And Peter practically allowed himself to be 
sought out for the reason that, as he explained 
to himself, “ The old chap does not know it, 
but he is lonely—besides he is fantastically in¬ 
teresting.” 

Fantastic was one of Pere FormoPs words. 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 43 


Before he left Paris on any mission, he in¬ 
variably went and bade Pere Formol good¬ 
bye. When he returned he felt he must drop 
in and look him up. And Pere Formol, did he 
miss the loud, careless step on the stairs, the 
cheery greeting of the young bass voice, the 
hand waving above the cap if he happened to 
meet him in the narrow street? 

Surely this careless responsive charm would 
appeal to any man, particularly to a man no 
longer young. But on the contrary he hard¬ 
ened himself and resolved that he would not 
be won by it. To be with Peter instead of re¬ 
newing his lost youth made him scarcely able 
to conceal his irritation that he, Pere Formol, 
was growing old. It drove him to a hard de¬ 
cision that the constant practise of a lack of 
sympathy with humanity had made possible to 
him—the decision to use youth’s happiness to 
pay a score of age. Peter’s effort to throw 
around him an atmosphere of youth, energy 
and increasing cheerfulness, wrought a havoc 
of which he did not dream. 


44 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 


“ He has not yet been after the women,” 
said Pere Formol to himself, but the thought 
that a woman would one day come into Peter's 
life was persistent with him, and with it awoke 
the conviction that Peter had the make up that 
would win him any woman he chose. 

Above the chimney pots, the swallows cir¬ 
cled at sundown, sometimes guiding their own 
movements and at others seemingly carried on 
some strong current of fate. 


CHAPTER VI 


Peter turned on his heel and tramped away 
toward the Louvre. He had just left the Em¬ 
bassy and instead of walking down the rue de 
Rivoli, he turned into the Place de la Con¬ 
corde, preparing to walk through the Tuileries 
Gardens, but he changed his mind thinking he 
would go into Galignini’s and buy a novel to 
take home with him. 

He walked down the rue de Rivoli and went 
into Galignini’s. He opened one or two books 
lying on the counter. Then he picked up a 
book called “ A Pleasing Guide, Paris by Day, 
Paris by Night.” He opened it at the heading, 
“ How to Dress in Paris.” First subdivision. 
“ Mornings.—Till midday, men wear lounge 
suits and bowler hats. Ladies wear, if hot 
weather prevails, a linen, or batiste costume; 
if the weather is cool a tailor-made dress, of 
fancy woollen material. Small hat.” 

A sound behind him attracted his attention. 

45 


46 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

He heard a man’s voice say something to a 
woman and her answer: “ Oh, no, Jocelyn. If 
it is for me, I would like Barrie’s last book. 
It is quite short, I believe, but it is about cour¬ 
age.” 

At that moment Peter turned and looked at 
her; her eyes were travelling over the titles on 
the backs of a row of books. 

“ That woman is beautiful,” was Peter’s 
thought. He saw her face light up with sur¬ 
prised interest, he saw her give the slightest 
nod of her head and slip out a brown gloved 
hand toward the row of books. She tried to 
take one, but her tight sleeve would not allow 
the arm to stretch out further. 

Peter came forward. “ May I? ” he asked. 

The brown gloved hand pointed. Peter’s 
strong young ungloved hand took the book. 
He handed it to her. It was called “ Cour¬ 
age.” 

“ Thank you so much,” she was saying. 
And turned immediately, but the man had 
moved on. 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 47 


She called, “Jocelyn, this is the book I 
want.” Her companion had just picked up a 
novel with a very dramatic jacket. He took 
the book. “ Why don’t you choose something 
more cheerful? ” he asked. 

He gave a commiserating chuckle. 

“ Courage, Jocelyn,” she said, “ nothing 
could be more cheerful.” 

“ I don’t agree,” he said. “ I like a good 
yarn. The things you don’t want your friends 
to do, but which interest you in a book.” 

Peter who knew so little of life, who had 
touched so far only the fringe of it, waited to 
hear her speak again, but she walked toward 
the door and stood looking into the street. Her 
companion paid at the desk for the books and 
waited for his parcel. When it was tied up, he 
too went to the door. “ Ready? ” He asked. 

Peter saw them go out. 

“ Well-bred English people,” he thought 
suddenly. “ You can’t beat ’em.” He was 
thinking of the lady and her low pretty voice. 

Suddenly he didn’t want to go and call on 


48 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 


Pere Formol; confronted by the illusion of 
fineness, by the decor of the genuine, Pere 
Formol seemed like a dreamer, whose dream 
had been too faint. A dream gone awry and 
allowed to blot out the better things. Peter 
did not consciously criticise Pere Formol, but 
for the first time he felt a little out of tune 
with him. He retraced his steps and enter¬ 
ing the Tuileries Gardens walked down the 
path looking at the flowers. 


CHAPTER VII 


To avoid his daily chat with Pere Formol, 
Peter had not been much at home; all that he 
told Na-Na was: “ See I have a good English 
breakfast, with bacon and marmalade, the 
other meals I will have at the Officers’ Club.” 

Her ‘‘beau gartjon” as Na-Na called him 
in her thoughts, was well looked after in his 
rooms. His clothes were washed, his clothes 
were mended, his clothes were pressed by 
Na-Na’s faithful hands. And for this Peter 
lived a little out of his beat, as it were. Na-Na 
had to keep out of his way of course. Peter’s 
life in England had made him fastidious, and 
clear about having no one fuss over him, but 
there was no more carefully cooked “ petit 
dejeuner” in Paris than was carried in to 
Peter every morning by Na-Na’s loving 
hands. 

Peter had thought several times of the beau- 
49 


50 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 


tiful woman he had seen at Galignini’s book¬ 
store. Once or twice he had walked down the 
Rue de la Paix between four and five, the hour 
of the great dressmakers for trying on in the 
salons. He had watched the smart turnouts 
and the motor cars arriving in long file and he 
had looked to see the English lady among this 
elegance and fashion. Perhaps he was wasting 
his time; perhaps she had left Paris and had 
only been there for a few hours on her way to 
some well-known cure. And yet in Paris more 
than any city in the world one is apt to see the 
same people repeatedly. Especially if they 
are foreigners of a certain class do they fre¬ 
quent the same places. A certain place being 
the mode for lunch, another for dinner and 
quite another for supper after the theatre. 

Peter was very pleased with his new ap¬ 
pointment at the Embassy. That it should 
have been offered to him seemed in no manner 
strange; he thought it natural, expecting life to 
be a figure that stood out, smiled and beckoned. 
The war was over; it was natural that a man 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 51 


in the aviation should be offered something 
else. Content filled him. He thought it nat¬ 
ural that the next move should be for the bet¬ 
ter. If he heard of a man who had been Major 
in the artillery taking a position as butler to a 
“ nouveau riche,” with the confidence of youth, 
he thought, “ Poor beggar, rotten luck, but 
that couldn’t happen to me.” 

Thus it was to him with regard to life. Life 
seemed to him joyous and he thought it could 
never express anything but itself, any mood 
but its own. He knew his parents were dead 
and for the most part he did not bother to re¬ 
gret them. Now and again Brand appeared 
with advice, or money. The former he disre¬ 
garded, the latter he spent, as he did every¬ 
thing, joyously, generously, without thought. 
If he needed more, Brand would reappear with 
more. Thought was an Arabian lamp that 
hardly needed rubbing. When he needed 
Brand, Brand appeared. Brand was to him 
a rum little chap, who did his bidding. 

About a week after his visit to Galignini’s 


52 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

late in the afternoon, he resolved to go home 
and smoke a pipe; he was dining and going to 
the Ballet and he had to change. To his sur¬ 
prise, he saw a motor standing in front of fifty- 
one. Few of the clientele of the shops in his 
street came in taxis and none in motors. Idly 
he wondered who in the building was receiving 
this guest. Pie thought casually of the people 
above him; he thought of the people who 
had the other half of his floor and he dis¬ 
missed them from his mind. Peter saw that 
Madame Taney re had come out of her shop 
as far as Madame Paul’s door and that they 
were standing together looking at the motor 
with the basket-covered chassis. Peter cast a 
look at these two women; he knew them well 
from looking down from his sitting-room win¬ 
dow. Madame Taneyre was the typical fish 
wife, arms akimbo, a buxom form, rosy cheeks 
and hair piled high on the top of her head. 
She seemed very excited, very interested and 
was nodding in the direction of the motor. 

“ Curiosity is a feminine trait,” said Peter 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 53 


to himself. Almost absent-mindedly, still 
smiling at the thought of the busybodies 
Madame Taneyre and Madame Paul, he 
opened the door of Pere Formol’s shop and 
walked in. Instead of being in his accustomed 
chair beside his table Pere Formol was stand¬ 
ing and in the chair, her veil thrown back over 
the brim of her hat, her white gloved hands 
clasped together as if they were making some 
request, sat the English lady whom Peter had 
seen a few days before at Galignini’s. 

The English lady and the scent of violets in 
the sunbeam that came slantingly through the 
upper part of the windows. 


CHAPTER VIII 


Peter said, “ I beg your pardon.” He was 
on the point of backing out. In a confused 
boyish way, he excused himself for bursting in 
on them, for interrupting. 

A gleam of sardonic amusement came into 
Pere Formol’s face. He did not seem an¬ 
noyed. 

“ Stay,” he murmured, “ I should like to 
have the pleasure of introducing you—Lady 
Gilchrist, may I introduce Peter Magdalen? ” 

Peter’s boyish voice said: 

“ Awfully jolly I came in.” 

Lady Gilchrist bowed. Her white gloved 
hands pressed a little against each other. 
Very suddenly she raised her head. She saw 
the eager boyish face. A good-looking boy 
with yellow hair and clear blue eyes and some¬ 
thing sunny about him. Her lips parted as if 

a sigh had forced its escape. Her eyebrows 
54 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 55 

rose. Her face went soft. She saw Peter’s 
right hand had moved ever so little in her di¬ 
rection and had then been drawn back. Her 
little hand went forward. Peter grasped it. 
Again she gave a little gasp. 

“ It is just my rings,” she said. About her 
face was a hint of clouds, like rain in sunshine. 
The light from the window fell on her face and 
on the threads of silver in her hair above the 
ears. The hand that Peter had taken drew 
back and pressed itself involuntarily against 
her breast. 

“ I am awfully clumsy,” said Peter and 
laughed, as if to set her laughing at him and 
clear the air. His laugh was soft and infec¬ 
tious. It was like a note from the sunbeam that 
played down the dark room from the window. 
And yet Lady Gilchrist drew back from him 
almost as if she were saying, “ You’re not go¬ 
ing to hurt me, are you? ” 

The sparkling, eager expression in Peter’s 
face died out under her gaze. With rather a 
choky feeling he backed a little away from her. 


56 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

“ Her,” he thought to himself, “ Her. And 
I am clumsy.” 

He took shelter in silence, looking at Pere 
Formol. 

Pere Formol stood smiling, sardonic wise. 

There was an atmosphere of hostility in the 
room; where did it come from? Restraining 
his sardonics slightly, Pere Formol made an 
effort at affability. 

He said, looking at Lady Gilchrist, “ Mag¬ 
dalen is interested in art. He drops in occa¬ 
sionally to talk over some of the phases that 
interest him. He has been in Paris for three 
years now. We are quite old friends.” 

Not in the least embarrassed by the conster¬ 
nation on the part of his guests, Pere Formol 
talked gaily, reminding Lady Gilchrist of her 
former interest in painting, chaffing her on 
the fact that she had once said she did not 
know anything about treatment, but that she 
liked an interesting subject. And all the time 
Lady Gilchrist looked as though she longed 
to spread out her hands in the protesting ges- 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 57 


tare of one keeping something off, away from 
her, to say, “ Stop, I don’t want to hear.” 

Pere Formol’s observant old eyes watched 
as he talked. When the conversation dropped, 
he prepared to shoot a bolt, with a clever aim 
and a steady hand. 

“ I tell him, Lady Gilchrist, that an artist 
must know all phases of life. To the pure all 
things are pure ”—Lady Gilchrist drew herself 
up slightly—“ but to the artist there must not 
be only the light, else how can he give it relief? 
As well he must be able to paint the shadow.” 

“ Mr. Magdalen is not an artist, I think.” 

“ No, he is in the flying corps. But I have 
hopes that, by exerting my influence, he will 
become one of my disciples.” 

“ She doesn’t like him,” Peter thought, as 
he watched Lady Gilchrist’s expression. “ She 
doesn’t want me to study art with him.” Peter 
felt a twitch that set him to put himself right 
in her eyes. 

“ You know,” he said, “ it is all rot about 
my being an artist. I am just a high flyer. I 


58 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

have got no aptitude for art, really. I like 
danger and ”—Peter thought a minute 
“ beauty,” he said softly. “ To travel above 
the clouds and see a city far below look like a 
Chinese puzzle. To fly beside some strong 
winged bird.” Peter paused. The thing was 
too near to him to be revealed even to Lady 
Gilchrist. 

Lady Gilchrist looked at him, her lips 
parted. “ You are in the flying corps? ” she 
asked. “Now?” 

Peter smiled down at her. 

“ Since the war,” he said, “ they don’t need 
all of us. I know France and French pretty 
well. They’ve stuck me in the Embassy.” 

A gleam of determination came to Lady 
Gilchrist. 

“ I would stay in the Embassy,” she said 
with a touch of persuasion. “ It may lead to 
good appointments. It is better than art.” 

“ It is so good of you to take an interest in 
my young friend, Peter,” said Pere Formol. 

Immediately Lady Gilchrist rose to go. 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 59 


“ You haven’t told me how long you are 
staying in Paris,” said Pere Formol. 

“ I am staying some time longer.” 

“ Ah! Shall I see you again? ” 

“ Yes, I will come again.” 

She shook hands with Pere Formol. Peter 
was on the point of offering to put her in her 
motor when he realized he was not the host; 
perhaps it was not his place. 

“ Good-bye,” she said to Peter. 

“ Good-bye.” Peter took her hand and tried 
to hold it gently. “ Awfully jolly I came in.” 

Lady Gilchrist smiled at him and again he 
felt the effect of the sun shining through rain. 

Pere Formol saw her into her motor, but 
Peter watched the motor through the open 
door until he saw Pere Formol come back. 


CHAPTER IX 


In his youth it would have been hard to re¬ 
fuse admiration to Gilly Collins. There had 
been moments then, when some impulse drew 
him to his fellows, and his face had been lighted 
up by some kindly thought as he looked 
around him at life and its relations—but that 
lamp had long been out. Disappointed art 
and a spirit of revenge had brought about a 
strange result. Now there was an air of slov¬ 
enliness about the former good-looking Ox¬ 
ford student, as if the steps of fate were draw¬ 
ing near to him, as if when he sat in the even¬ 
ing behind the shutters of his room he could 
hear through the bolted lattice Fate drawing 
ever nearer to take its certain toll. 

His appearance was extraordinary. His 
hair was white, and his eyes were set in dark 

circles that told of long vigils and disappoint- 
60 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 61 

ment of mind, when the creations of his hands 
were but repeated failures. 

Strange thoughts must have come into Lady 
Gilchrist’s mind as she recognized this man 
to be one of the attractive personalities of his 
year at Magdalen College. It must have 
grieved her gracious spirit to see his thread¬ 
bare clothes and to notice his neglect of his 
personal appearance. It was indeed in strange 
contrast to her own pretty clothes. In Oxford 
he had dreamt of being what he might have 
been. In Paris he was what he was. He had 
intended to be the living embodiment of some 
great force, but as his step grew slower, 
more uncertain with the weight of years, his 
vision paled. Instead of a thinker walking 
majestically, he became a man stooping be¬ 
neath a load. And as his vision receded and 
his own place in the social system became clear 
to him, the crafty expression caused first by 
the electric shock of discovering his real posi¬ 
tion deepened and fixed itself and took a per¬ 
manent hold. The highly refined materialism/ 


62 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 
of modern life, which in a lazy obstinacy he 
had shunned, was not there to add a conven¬ 
tional exterior to his declining years. He had 
thrown the dice and he had lost, and instead 
of accepting it in bravery as a good soldier of 
fortune, he developed a need of trickery and 
revenge. 

Upon the hearth the flame of love was out. 
Beside the hearth day by day, week by week, 
year by year, he waited for the flame of in¬ 
spiration to take its place, but life went by and 
an inspiration strong enough to spend itself in a 
sudden and violent outbreak of sufficient power 
to raise him above his fellows never came. 
That sense of peace, that placid melancholy, 
which takes possession of some dreamers when 
the dream is gone has its own fitting and 
mournful charm. But there is something very 
bitter about a nature which in middle age 
returns upon itself in sourness and in rancour. 
This rancour is like a rainburst in the hills, 
which swells the rivers until the sediment is 
driven to the surface and it swirls in curdled 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 63 

yellow foam. It breaks all bounds and then 
the walls which guard those things we keep 
from strangers are down. To himself, think¬ 
ing of the future, Pere Formol’s life was 
magnificent. To the world it was wretched. 
He now saw it as the world saw it. “ To 
know his hand against everyone’s.” It had 
come to that. 

Pere Formol sat in his workshop at his table. 
In his hand he held a small morocco note-book. 
He was idly turning the pages. He read— 

“ Waste if not constantly repaired through 
the necessary agencies—will shorten life.” He 
turned a couple of leaves and read: 

“ Leonardo—the desire of perfection and 
the love of toil.” 

“ Leonardo who waited always for inspira¬ 
tion and who gave to the Gioconda her unfath¬ 
omable smile.” And again— 

“ Through the agency of electricity the force 
stored up in man is directed.” 

And yet again, as if the idea persisted— 

“ Through the phenomena of nature it is 


64 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 
demonstrated waste will eventually destroy 
life.” 

Pere Formol laid down his note-book and 
tearing the back off a note that Peter had 
written him, breaking an engagement to dine, 
he cut it into three pieces of equal size. Upon 
each he wrote one word. Then he laid the 
paper on the table. He got up from his desk 
and crossing to an oak cupboard, he found a 
bottle containing a white substance that looked 
like a fine white dust. The bottle was about 
one-quarter full and had no label. Returning 
to his table, he took from the drawer three 
coins, a fifty centime piece, a one franc piece 
and a two franc piece. He laid one on each 
of the pieces of paper and then slowly with 
great care he put as much of the white sub¬ 
stance as the coin would hold. Having done 
this, he removed the coin and folded each paper 
as one folds a powder. He sat for a moment 
looking at the three small folded pieces of 
paper as a man might look at a revolver that 
he had just loaded, then he picked them up 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 65 


and put them away in a box in the drawer of 
his desk. He heard a noise; it was a mouse in 
the wainscoting gnawing at the wood. 


CHAPTER X 


Peter’s days as he said to himself were at 
that time “ pretty much of a muchness.” 
When morning came it was like a tiny stream 
growing louder and louder until it finally 
flowed into Peter’s mind. At this point his 
mind awoke and he realized that Na-Na was 
knocking at his door. 

“ Monsieur Pee-tah, Monsieur Pee-tah.” 

“ Oui, oui, un moment.” 

Peter rubbed his hands over his eyes and 
forehead and giving a good yawn stretched 
himself. 

Then Na-Na knocked again. 

“ Monsieur Pee-tah, Monsieur Pee-tah.” 

Then Peter rolled out of bed and began a 
search for his dressing gown, talking out loud 
all the time to keep Na-Na quiet. 

“ Properly, Na-Na, properly. That dress- 
66 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 67 

ing gown has walked off again. Just wait 
until I find it. There it is. Now just one 
moment. Tie the cord in a good stiff knot. 
There you are, Na-Na. Tres bon jour.” 
Peter looked for the glint in the old peasant’s 
eye as he opened the door. He stood before 
her, half smiling, his hands in his pockets, look¬ 
ing down at her. At the first sight of him 
Na-Na’s impatience at being kept waiting 
evaporated. 

After preparing Peter’s bath, Na-Na set 
breakfast in his sitting-room. A French 
breakfast amplified by English accessories. 
Aware that Na-Na would come to put every¬ 
thing in its place the moment he was gone, 
Peter did not trouble to be tidy, but pulled 
things out recklessly in his hurry to be away 
and about. The twenties are brave years. 
Peter was gay and almost greedy of life. 
Tum-tum-tum. Rat-tat-tat. Tum-tum-tum, 
he would hammer on Pere Formol’s door 
sometimes as he passed down the stairs. And 
Pere Formol the cynic would pause as he shook 


08 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 
the little fine powder into his cup of coffee 
and say: 

“ There goes youth, to where youth goes.” 

Peter went to the office every morning now. 
Sometimes he had to call on some Englishman 
in Paris, sometimes he had to go in search of 
statistics. Sometimes there was work to be 
done in the office itself. He would have pre¬ 
ferred that he should be flying, but having been 
proposed for his present job, he took it know¬ 
ing it to be a “ good thing.” 

At dejeuner, as is the way with the young 
and healthy, the pangs of hunger made them¬ 
selves felt and either at his Club, or at a cafe, 
or at some hotel with one of the English visi¬ 
tors in Paris, he made a good healthy sub¬ 
stantial meal. After dejeuner he returned to 
the office where he worked until five. At five 
he often went over to the Inter-Allies Club 
and had a cup of tea. The one thing he re¬ 
gretted about this new life was that he had 
not enough strenuous exercise. Occasionally 
at five o’clock he went to a trainer and had a 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 69 

good try-out with the gloves, just to keep him¬ 
self fit. “ Joily good thing, life,” he thought. 
And his face at that time was the face of a 
man who mounts the stirrup to ride. 

In the evening, again, he dined at the Club 
and played billiards with some Englishman 
in Paris, or some chap he had known in Eng¬ 
land who perhaps was passing through. Some¬ 
times he accepted the invitations which came 
to him and he dined out and went on to the 
opera and then on again to Les Acacias and on 
again to some gathering later than that. But 
on account of his youth and his splendid health 
when Na-Na knocked at his door he was 
ready to get up. And on account of a quality 
as yet untouched, the something desperate and 
headlong which is abroad in Paris passed him 
by. Pie saw life hurrying along the Boule¬ 
vards with the perfume of Patchouli, the mark 
of the lip-stick and blackened eyes, and turning 
to the little Scotchman who worked with him 
in the office, and who was often his companion, 
he would say: 


70 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

“ Hoot, Bobby, I miss the war. I’d like to 
be up ten thousand feet again and drop on the 
tail of some little Boche. Those were good 
days when the sky swung up and the earth 
swung down, and the landscape ran away.” 

And the little Scotchman would answer 
enigmatically: “ I am thinking that of the two 
evils, war and woman, perhaps woman is the 
worst.” 

“ Perhaps,” responded Peter dryly. “ I 
never think of them.” 

And when later in the evening the stars came 
out one by one and he walked through the 
Tuileries Gardens, Peter could smell the moon¬ 
light as he swung home. 

Such was an average day in Peter’s life. 


CHAPTER XI 

Every afternoon since his meeting with her 
in Pere Formol’s room, Peter walked past the 
Ritz in the hope of seeing Lady Gilchrist. He 
felt that if he met her again he would perhaps 
be able to persuade her to come with him to 
some of the places English people like to go to 
in Paris, having merely one hope in fifty that 
the Ritz was in fact her hotel, and having the 
very decided fear that she might already have 
left Paris. When a week had passed, Peter 
began to despair of seeing her again. With¬ 
out concerning himself as to what he should 
do if he saw her, he decided to go to dejeuner 
at the Ritz, having a presentiment that she was 
there. In the early morning it had been rain¬ 
ing, but just before twelve the sun appeared, 
making little patches of light on the shining 
pavement. Peter crossed the Place Vendome, 
one hand swinging a cane, the other deep in 

his pocket, and as he walked he enjoyed the 
71 


72 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 
“ va et vient,” the go, the furore of Paris and 
the exhilaration of being in the centre of one of 
the greatest cities of the world. As Peter 
would have expressed it, “ the dew was on.” 

At the Ritz he found some tables had been 
set in the garden. Two or three people turned 
to look at the young Englishman. Peter was 
unmistakably English. The dress—the clothes 
and figure, the square shoulders that swag¬ 
gered as he went across to his table at the side. 
He was not modern Paris, he was modern 
Cosmopolis. Unconsciously as he took his 
seat, he looked about him, searched the chairs 
at the other tables. At any rate she was not 
yet here. He settled himself to choose his 
luncheon. What he would have—decided 
upon, he lighted a cigarette and again looked 
around. For the most part people were just 
beginning their melon; physically their faces 
expressed expectation. The best was yet to 
come. 

Opposite to him were three people, two men 
and a woman. The woman had a curious ex- 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 73 


pression about the eyes; she picked up a letter 
one of the men handed to her and held it very 
close to her face; her eyes were unnaturally 
bright. One of her companions was evidently 
a South American; behind him the imagination 
saw sand and above him waved palm trees. 
Out of his sleepy eyes he watched the others 
as a cat watches its prey, knowing that at any 
time it can spring. The manner of the second 
man was eager, as though he were trying to 
find some excuse to make his position quite 
solid. 

“ Queer outfit,” thought Peter, too young to 
classify them. A burst of sunshine caught his 
eye. It flowed out from behind a cloud and 
touched the vine against the wall. 

“ Si Madame veut se donner la peine de 
venir ici.” The head waiter was backing from 
the door. The other waiters scurried out of his 
way like flies. Someone was being led to the 
little table marked “ Reserved.” Peter turned 
to look. 

He saw two people, a tall, beautifully 


74 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

dressed woman, and a man walking down the 
court to the disengaged table. His heart gave 
a little leap. The woman was Lady Gilchrist. 
Peter noticed that the man was a tall, good- 
looking man. He took the chair opposite 
Lady Gilchrist with his back to Peter. Peter 
noticed that his head was covered with thick 
gray hair. “ I am sure I have met that man,” 
Peter thought; there was something about him 
that seemed familiar. He slightly wrinkled 
his forehead until he remembered, sitting at 
lunch in a Club overlooking the railings of 
Piccadilly, he had seen this man standing in 
the door that opened into the card-room. 
“ That,” his host had explained, “ is Jocelyn 
Gilchrist. Just missed winning the June 
stakes. Rum chap. Spends his time sitting 
on a corn-bin wondering how he can win the 
Derby.” Peter’s mind cleared; so that was 
Lady Gilchrist’s husband. Peter knew him, 
wondered if the beggar remembered. He had 
played bridge with him a couple of times at 
the Club. He remembered he had been full 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 75 


of the idea of cutting a muscle in a horse’s tail 
to give it the proper kink. “ Added a cool 
hundred to the price,” he said. Those were 
the days when a thoroughbred was worth 
something. 

Peter bent over his fish; he would look up 
presently and if Lady Gilchrist bowed, go over 
and shake hands with her. Peter looked over 
once or twice but Lady Gilchrist was never 
looking in his direction. And yet she must 
have seen him. As a matter of fact, he no¬ 
ticed she had turned slightly as though she 
were trying not to see him. Had she seen 
him? He waited for her to look in his direc¬ 
tion. Peter had already finished his fish and 
they had finished their melon. The waiter took 
away their plates. At this moment Lady Gil¬ 
christ made a movement as though she had just 
remembered something. She spoke to her hus¬ 
band. He apparently shook his head in an 
effort to dissuade her. She searched in a little 
black bag and produced a key, which she held 
out to him. Again he shook his head, but she 


76 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

persisted. Rather reluctantly he put his table 
napkin on the table and rising he took the key 
from her hand. As he made his way out to the 
door there was the usual flutter of waiters. 

Lady Gilchrist watched him. When he 
passed from sight she still watched him, until 
the chance of his immediate return seemed im¬ 
probable, then she turned, bowed to Peter and 
making a gesture, beckoned him to come to 
her. Peter got up and went across the court 
toward her, threading his way among the ta¬ 
bles. 

She did not say, “ I have only just recog¬ 
nized you. Were you there all the time? ” 

“ Mr. Magdalen,” she said, holding out her 
hand, “ how do you do? ” 

But Peter was not analyzing any subtle 
scepticisms of her mind. Whether she had, or 
had not intended to see him. Her greeting to 
him was kind. He noticed that her manner 
seemed a little hurried, as if she wanted to be 
very kind quickly and then wanted him to go 
away. She had a low, deep voice that charmed 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 77 

him. He found her human with a warmth 
of her own and, of course, she was beautiful 
and beautifully dressed. Peter felt in what 
she said her reception of him was hurried; per¬ 
haps she did not want to introduce him to her 
husband. Her nervousness, her hurry com¬ 
municated itself to him. He must, he thought, 
make the most of this and go. 

“ May I ask,” he said, “ are you passing 
through, or staying? ” 

“ Passing through.” 

“ I was afraid,” Peter said abruptly. “ I 
wish I could see you again. Would you come 
to tea with me? I have a little car; we might 
go to Versailles. There are some charming 
small cafes near Paris where we might have 
tea. I know I am rather rushing in, but I do 
wish you would come. 

“ Don’t mind my asking you, if you don’t 
wish to be bothered. But in Paris people do 
things they would not do in London; I mean 
they go about more freely.” 

Lady Gilchrist glanced at the door before 


78 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 
answering. “ At my age,” she said, “ one can 
do so many things.” 

Peter smiled at the idea of her being old. 
He did not know the subtle distinctions that 
women draw between one year and the next. 

“ When one is old,” she said, “ there is less 
to be excited about. One does not draw back 
as one did when one was younger.” She hesi¬ 
tated and then said, “ I think I can come to 
tea with you.” 

“ I would call for you,” said Peter, “ when¬ 
ever you say.” 

Lady Gilchrist’s manner changed again; it 
became cautious. 

“No; don’t call for me. I shan’t be here. 
I am motoring with a friend, an American 
woman, who lives in Paris, but I shall get her 
to drop me at the Pre Catalan at five and we 
will have tea under the trees.” 

As she spoke she gently held out her hand, 
and Peter thought, “ She wants me to go now.” 

She added, leaning forward again and look¬ 
ing at him: 


/ 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 79 

“ To-morrow at five, I will meet you at the 
Pre Catalan/’ 

Then her spirit strained away, drawn from 
the moment by something intangible. 

“ Until to-morrow,” said Peter. As he 
turned to go back to his table, the sun burst, in 
one of her sudden moods, through the clouds 
and her beams flooded the garden. 

“ It is jolly,” said Peter. “ The sun and 
everything. Just the way things are and it 
will be ripping to-morrow too.” 

Peter made his way back to his own table. 

The waiter flourished the menu for a further 
order, but Peter shook his head. 

“ Coffee,” he said, “ and bring the bill with 
it.” 

When the coffee came, he drank it quickly, 
paid the bill, and without looking again in 
Lady Gilchrist’s direction, he went through 
the door and disappeared into the hotel. 


CHAPTER XII 


The sweet air of Paris, how clear, how in¬ 
vigorating, how clean it is. It touched Peter’s 
lips as he drove his car along the Avenue des 
Acacias on his way to the Pre Catalan. A 
more beautiful day for seeing the trees, the 
swards, the glimpses of the lakes could hardly 
be imagined. People were sitting under the 
trees watching the movement and the passing 
of the motors and the crowd returning from 
the races. Nature had spun a romance in the 
Bois de Boulogne. A painter had set his easel 
under the trees. 

Peter turned his car up the road that led to 
the restaurant. He did not go up to the door, 
but stopped to leave his motor in the row where 
the waiting machines were drawn up in line. 
He locked it and then strolled up to the door. 
He looked in at the large room where the 

dancers gather, at the band pausing be- 
80 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 81 
tween two selections, at the row of tables 
near the windows. Lady Gilchrist was not 
there. 

He went down the steps and crossed the 
road to a little table on the grass. From there 
he could watch the motors which arrived almost 
every minute and be ready to claim her when 
she came. There was a good turnout. Ve¬ 
hicles of all sorts and descriptions arrived in¬ 
cessantly. The American tourist in a fiacre. 
The Parisian in her Renault car. In the ball¬ 
room quite a number of couples were dancing. 
There was the excitement, the “ go ” that at¬ 
tends everything that is fashionable in Paris. 
Plow long does it last? Until the soft glow of 
youth goes out. As long as there is the glow 
of warmth in the heart, the sympathy, the ache 
for somebody else, the play is on for us and 
its sweetness does not ebb. And when the 
happy hunting grounds lose their charm, the 
fault is not with them; they are just as they 
have always been, the paper flowers, the bands, 
the bustle, the movement; it is we ourselves 


82 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

who put out the lights. Peter was young, he 
was waiting for a charming woman, and he 
saw things, not as they are, but as they are 
meant to be. He felt happy, excited, one with 
the jolly world. 

The waiter came. “ I shall want tea,” Peter 
said. “ For two, but not just yet. I do not 
know whether we shall have tea inside, or out 
here.” The tall, dark, young waiter, with the 
pallid face, bowed. He was accustomed to 
ladies. When he considered their whims, when 
he pleased them, it meant money in his hand. 
He remained bowed a minute. The young 
man’s eyes were bright. In this mood clients 
gave good tips. The waiter hoped they would 
stay at his table. For a minute he stood bowed, 
then he moved on. 

At this moment Peter became aware of a 
smart car with a pattern of basket work on its 
body. The chauffeur was very fat. He had 
a short, fat neck and he held his chin in the 
air, over his collar, as if it were necessary to do 
this in order to be able to see at all. The car 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 83 


stopped. Peter was so occupied watching the 
chauffeur that he did not notice until she had 
reached the door that the lady was Lady Gil¬ 
christ. Peter full of anticipation went across 
to claim her. 

“Ah! Ladjr Gilchrist. There you are. 
How good of you to come. Shall we have tea 
inside or out? Inside one can see them trying 
the Maxixe. Outside there is fresh air.” 
Peter took his hat in one hand and held out the 
other. 

Lady Gilchrist took his hand. With the 
certainty of a woman who knows her world, she 
looked quietly first inside, then out, deciding 
between the choice of table. It was partly this 
quiet assurance that fascinated Peter. 

“ I think,” she said, “ perhaps it would be 
nice outside. The music is often a little loud. 
Outside we can talk better.” 

Peter led the way to where the pallid young 
waiter had pulled out a chair. 

Peter took his seat opposite to her. The 
waiter waved the menu. Peter thought a mo- 


84 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

ment. “ You take tea? ” he asked. Lady Gil¬ 
christ nodded. Peter ordered much more than 
they could possibly eat. 

“ It’s too much luck! ” he said, “ your com¬ 
ing. Let us talk, or rather you talk and I 
shall listen.” Peter’s voice was agreeable. It 
had vibrations in it like an instrument that has 
a good sounding-board. 

“ Why should I do the talking? ” was Lady 
Gilchrist’s reply. 

“ Because,” Peter answered. “ Of course I 
know a lot about machinery and guns and box¬ 
ing, and that kind of thing, but there is a lot 
about life that I don’t know. I feel that it 
can be beautiful in a way that I know noth¬ 
ing about. I think you could tell me about 
that if you would.” 

Lady Gilchrist shook her head. 

“ I don’t believe anyone can tell us,” she 
said. “ I think we must each of us learn for 
ourselves.” Her brows knit. She seemed to 
be searching for some thought. “ Life is full 
of possibilities. The great thing is not to miss 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 85 


them, to be on the watch for them, so that when 
they come we are ready.” 

“ It is all very well,” answered Peter, “ to 
look out for the main chance, but sometimes we 
fail somehow; when we jump into a situation 
we are not ready for it, we haven’t quite got 
the compass.” 

“ That is youth,” said Lady Gilchrist 
gently. 

“ Not exactly. I dare say chaps who have 
had a father and mother, they learn from them. 
I have never had a father or a mother,” Peter 
added hurriedly. “ It’s hard to explain.” 

Lady Gilchrist seemed about to say some¬ 
thing; she stopped and bit her lip. 

Across the lawn underneath the trees the 
waiter appeared bringing their tea. 

“ There is a sort of something,” Peter said, 
“ chaps get from their parents that they don’t 
get in any other way. Other things come in 
their place, guns and machinery and good 
sport, different things. But that thing, the 
thing I mean—it is deuced funny, but I can 


86 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

pick out a man that has had a good start, just 
as surely as I can pick out a thoroughbred 
pup. And I’m jolly sure about dogs too,” 
Peter added. 

Lady Gilchrist’s face was an odd mixture of 
sensations, but Peter was too busy putting the 
cups in front of her and moving the teapot over 
to her side. As Lady Gilchrist looked at him 
she must have thought how bonnie he looked, 
good looking, sensitive perhaps and straight. 
She touched the cups lightly with her fingers 
and said with apparent slowness: 

“ Boys are not like girls; they go to school 
so early. They are lost to their parents when 
they are so young. It can’t make so much 
difference if a boy has lost his parents.” 

Peter looked up and caught her brown eyes 
looking into his. 

“ The others,” he said, “ go home in the holi¬ 
days.” 

“Ah!” said Lady Gilchrist. “I had for¬ 
gotten that.” 

Above the green of the park was the violet 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 87 


of the sky. People sat at the little tables. 
Waiters went from one to another. Above the 
tinkle of the china, the sounds of voices, the 
coming and going of the motors from time to 
time came the selections d’orchestre. It was 
the tea-hour, what Paris calls the “ five 
o’clock,” and with the Parisian’s inimitable 
way of adopting the customs of others, Paris, 
smart Paris, has adopted the five o’clock. 

Later will come the sunset and then the 
beatitude of the night, but the hour is still 
bright with day when Paris takes tea. 

The talk grew a little more lively. Peter 
described his work, his life in Paris, the friends 
that he had made at college, the acquaintances 
that he had picked up at the Embassy. He 
described them with a naivete that seemed to 
interest his guest. And Lady Gilchrist 
watched him as a woman of the world watches 
a young man when she wants to get at his 
secret. So Peter sat putting his cards one by 
one on the table, letting the conversation take 
whatever turn it would. It is seldom the 


88 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 
young who manipulate the conversation to 
bring it round to what they wish to know. 

Yielding to an irresistible impulse, Lady 
Gilchrist returned to the subject of upbring¬ 
ing. “ Don’t you think,” she said, “ sometimes 
parents are a hindrance rather than a help? 
So few parents are very wise. So few, if they 
are wise, have the strength of mind to act 
wisely. I think if a boy’s father were not per¬ 
haps a great help to him, it would be better 
for the boy to be taught self-reliance, to be 
taught to depend on himself, to be taught to 
live life on his own account.” 

The soft look Peter was learning to expect 
had come into her eyes, as though she begged 
him to accept her opinions, as though it mat¬ 
tered very much to her what Peter thought. 
Peter smiled up at her and said quickly: 

“ Of course. It is funny you should men¬ 
tion the fact of a father not being always a 
help. When I was a kid I used to ask Bland, 
the solicitor who pays my allowance, about my 
parents. I remember him saying, ‘ My word, 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 89 
I’ve heard your mother was as pretty a lady 
as ever stepped into Mayfair, but your father, 
young sir, your father, you are better without.’ 
I’ve always remembered old Bland’s words. 
I’ve often thought of them, and watched some 
woman getting into her carriage, or stepping 
across the road, and I’ve thought : 4 My mother 
may have been like that.’ ” Peter fixed his 
eyes on his guest. Lady Gilchrist touched the 
petals of a rose that was pinned in her dress. 

Peter’s features sharpened to an unusual in¬ 
tensity. 

“I see what you mean,” he said; “my 
mother to me is like a picture that has never 
been painted. It is inside me; life hasn’t 
spoiled it.” 

Lady Gilchrist turned to Peter almost 
piteously. 

“ Realization spoils so much. If I were you, 
I would be thankful things are as they are. 
You have your dream. Keep it.” 

Peter only smiled. 

Peter drove Lady Gilchrist back to her hotel 


90 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

in his car. He put her carefully into her seat, 
shut the door and then going to the other side 
got in beside her. As he guided the car to the 
Avenue once or twice she glanced at his young, 
brown, well made hands. Once or twice she 
looked at the clean-cut profile beside her, then 
as if by mutual consent, they both leaned back 
and abandoned themselves to the mystery of 
silence. 

A great Mystic has described the silence that 
falls between two people as being the final test 
of true communion of spirit. He says that 
when the lips are still, the soul awakes and 
journeys forth and that it is then that the walls 
fall and existence is laid bare. And that it is 
by the quality of this silence that falls be¬ 
tween two souls that the one must judge the 
other. Let him bethink well of the warning 
when the soul returns, for the soul is the mes¬ 
senger of the supreme truth and the tidings 
which it brings from the unknown of the other 
are unalterable and cannot change. 


CHAPTER XIII 


It is said that Napoleon’s idea of his own 
invincibility fought constantly for him and was 
on occasions as good to him as an extra twenty 
or thirty thousand men. To apply this prin¬ 
ciple, perhaps Pere Formol’s attitude to him¬ 
self was more important than the attitude of 
the world toward him. Sometimes it would 
seem that Providence contrives for the slack¬ 
ers a vengeance that operates to fresh loose¬ 
ness of the reins. The slacker becomes in a 
manner like the miser who saves to provide 
comforts in his old age and who in old age 
foregoes the comforts for the love he has learned 
to have toward gold. In the game Pere 
Formol was playing, the player often finds at 
last the stake to be himself. When the day is 
spent and the herdsman calls the cattle to¬ 
gether Fate picks up the strands that make 
the skein of life. 


91 


92 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

Philosophy will tell its believers that a man 
only fails when he has been faithless. When 
in some crisis of life he has not kept faith with 
himself, then existence dispossesses him of his 
faith, his hope, and he fails. A man is not a 
failure merely because he has not achieved 
what he has set out to achieve. The chance for 
which he played may have been too desperate. 
Plis lack of achievement may be more glorious 
than the success of another. A man fails only 
when he finds himself deserted by faith and 
hope. It is then that the great forces begin to 
work against him. 

For twenty-five years the idea of artistic 
achievement and the idea of revenge had lain 
side by side in Pere Formol’s brain. They had 
lain side by side until they had grown together 
and were so inseparable that when he failed 
to triumph in his art, it was as though the rea¬ 
son were the cause from which his longing for 
revenge had sprung. He did not consider that 
he failed because he lacked the great power of 
taking pains, of exhaustively studying detail. 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 93 


Or further, that he failed to grasp the imagina¬ 
tive possibility of the broad sweep of life. If 
asked, he would have attributed his limitations 
to the fact that at his outset Fate had given his 
life a twist. It was that twist for which he 
planned revenge. To hurt, if he could, after 
these years, her who had, he fancied, hurt him. 
Already he had forgotten his own culpability. 
He remembered only that there had been a 
rupture, a breaking of the knot; he had for¬ 
gotten that had Gilly Collins walked in honor, 
there would have been no knot to break. 

“ So this is the way she treated me,” he 
thought. “ Well.” And then that same ques¬ 
tion, that his worst self seemed to be always 
asking of him, “ How can I make her suffer 
for it?” 

He would sit and think how unfair life 
was, that he was alone and poor, while she was 
surrounded with friends as well as everything 
that money could buy. Life was shamefully 
unfair. And then revenge leapt upon him 
from behind. And a malicious idea came into 


94 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

his head. “ Suppose he smashed things up. 
Went to her husband and told him what he 
knew.” He reflected. That must be the con¬ 
clusive solution. The ace of trumps to be 
thrown down when all eyes were on the table. 
Something with the decorative effect of a 
tragedy took place in his imagination. Life 
rubbed his fur backwards and produced this 
spark in him, that he wanted to render evil for 
evil. All the influential and important people 
of the country were having a thoroughly good 
time while he, Gilly Collins, whom with a twist 
they had thrust back outside the circle, sat in 
his grubby little shop. If he could have 
achieved artistic greatness the grubby little 
shop would have become a background, artistic, 
interesting. Creating an atmosphere from 
which the painter did a portrait of himself. 
He wrote in his note-book: 

“ It was in Florence Leonardo learned the 
love of toil.” 

“ Botticelli is at his best when he allows him¬ 
self to be quite clear.” 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 95 

“ Sposalizio—A craftsman in the trade of 
beauty made me.” Or else: 

“ Gilly Collins did this head of a woman 
plump and blonde.” 

So rims the artist’s note-book, wherein Gilly 
Collins meant to place his name with all the 
rest. 

But with their own precise accompaniment 
the days ran on, and in the outline of those 
who have come through great tribulation for 
art, Gilly’s name was not found, and from his 
discontented and irritable life emerged instead 
of beauty a surly longing to hit out at those 
who drew a better life than he. Piece by piece 
the realization of vengeance came slowly as 
from some moving vehicle you see in flashes a 
dark street with people moving against the 
light. 


CHAPTER XIV 

Before Peter parted from Lady Gilchrist 
on the day she had taken tea with him, he had 
arranged that he should motor her down to 
Versailles on the following Saturday after¬ 
noon. Taking a parting look at her as she 
went into the hotel, Peter thought, “ She is 
wonderful, by Jove, she is wonderful.” And 
during the days intervening between Wednes¬ 
day and Saturday, there was a glow of happi¬ 
ness around his heart. 

When he dropped in to pay a visit the tone 
of his voice, the expression of his face were 
not lost on the sceptic, Pere Formol; his eyes 
became narrowed, the first drop of poison was 
beginning to work. Gilly Collins stretched his 
old feet under the table and thought, “ What 
fools the young are.” Shrugging his shoul¬ 
ders, he listened to Peter talk, waiting for him 
96 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 97 


to come around inevitably to the subject which 
was most certainly in his mind. 

Peter was so unaccustomed to approaching 
a subject with the idea of feigning an indiffer¬ 
ence, that he did feel that it was difficult for 
him. But he tried to lead Pere Formol into 
talking of Lady Gilchrist. Had he known her 
long? With a conscious effort he asked the 
direct question. The long accustomed cynic 
answered with a monosyllable, then he added 
he had first seen her in England when she was 
seventeen. 

“ She must have been lovely, then,” said 
Peter. The absurdly young comment was un¬ 
noticed. Pere Formol returned to the subject 
of some new acid that had a peculiar action 
upon steel. 

Soon after Peter went to keep an appoint¬ 
ment. Underneath his masculine traits, his 
love of flying, sport, and out-of-door games, 
hidden away in Peter’s make-up was a secret 
strain of chivalry of which he had occasionally 
been conscious during his life. It took him to 


98 THAT .WHICH IS PASSED 

see Pere Formol, because he felt he was a 
lonely old beggar. It kept him from discuss¬ 
ing Lady Gilchrist. This strain had no doubt 
been born with him. It constantly made him 
do things he had not intended. 

“ The Empire,” said Peter’s new chief, “ is 
made up of individuals. Each man’s portion 
is to look first well to the ideas under his own 
hat.” Peter, who liked his new Chief and who 
was in a peculiarly receptive condition at the 
moment mentally, resolved to keep watch of 
everything under his hat. 

“ The difference between war and peace,” 
continued his Chief, “ is, in war every man 
must think of the success of the Empire, in 
peace each man must think of the rectitude 
of his own ideals. In war ideals range 
into illusion, in peace they change back into 
life.” 

“ That is true, sir,” assented Peter, full¬ 
voiced and enthusiastic. 

The Chief, whose own ideas had long been 
sunk in diplomacy smiled. “ You’ve time for 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 99 
all that later, you young beggar/’ he said. 
“ At present, rejoice in your youth.” 

“ I do,” said Peter. It was Saturday morn¬ 
ing. He did not ask himself why he was 
happy. Merely he was going to do something 
he liked, with someone he liked. He felt full 
of anticipation, excited, gay. 

He met Lady Gilchrist at Rumpelmayer’s 
at three o’clock as she had suggested. It did 
not occur to him to wonder why she had taken 
the trouble to walk there from her hotel. 

Again they got into the little car. They 
passed through the Champs Elysees, they 
passed the crowds strolling along the Avenue 
of the Bois de Boulogne, the women trotting 
along, the men strolling beside them. Just at 
this time the day before, Peter remembered he 
had thought he would be driving Lady Gil¬ 
christ on the following day, if nothing hap¬ 
pened. Nothing had happened, here she was. 
Peter turned to look at her and their eyes met. 
Peter marked the change in her face when she 
looked at him with a little thrill. 


100 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

At Versailles they spent an hour among the 
pictures, the gardens, the royal carriages of 
state. Particularly Lady Gilchrist liked the 
room of Marie Antoinette in the little Trianon. 
She pointed through the window at a cloud 
over a twisted fruit tree. “It is so like the 
view from my window when I was a girl at 
home. My room looked out on a bit of what 
my father called the ‘ unconventional gar¬ 
den.’ ” Upon her face was the radiant light 
of remembrance. 

Peter decided to find out something about 
her, if she w r ould tell him. 

“ Had you any brothers and sisters? ” Peter 
asked shyly. 

Lady Gilchrist was looking out of the win¬ 
dow with her eyes on the shadows cast by the 
twisted tree. 

“ Two brothers, but no sister. My father 
died when I was sixteen; then my eldest 
brother became the head of the family.” She 
did not seem to wish to say more and Peter 
did not follow up with another question. 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 101 

Something in Peter was up in arms. His 
chivalry. He wanted to defend her, to fight 
for her, to stand in well with her. How ab¬ 
surd of him, he thought. She needed nothing. 
The last thought, however, a little irrelevantly 
he gave voice to. From looking at the shad¬ 
ows Lady Gilchrist was recalled by the tone 
of Peter’s voice. 

“ I’d like you to think well of me,” he said 
impulsively. “ It is the first time in my life 
I have ever thought like that of anyone. 
Funny, isn’t it, but it is rather true.” 

Peter was watching her face. He saw she 
understood his drift. He wanted subtly to 
hint that he thought her beautiful, and yet in a 
way it was more than that. 

Lady Gilchrist drew her eyes from the shad¬ 
ows, the far shore of yesterday, to the stream 
that was flowing by, and unconscious of the 
sightseers, of the gendarme, she put her hand 
on Peter’s arm and said, “ My dear, I do think 
well of you. I know that you have never in 
your life done a mean, or an unchivalrous 


102 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

thing. But who am I that I should praise 
you?” She withdrew her hand. “And yet 
a woman who has lived and seen as much of 
people as I have, learns that the greatest thing 
in life is absolute sincerity. To be quite real, 
as nature is real, is as wonderful as it is rare, 
and I think it is always the expression of a fine, 
generous heart.” Outside the closed windows 
a gentle wind stirred the leaves in the park. 

Then as if assuming his style of expres¬ 
sion: 

“ Life may not measure always up to what 
you think. It is a human thing, made by hu¬ 
man beings. It can’t, therefore, be anything 
but what it is. But when it disappoints you,” 
Lady Gilchrist was speaking a little hurriedly, 
but very decidedly as one who is quite sure of 
what she is saying, “ when it disappoints, 
doesn’t measure up, don’t you know, don’t lose 
faith in it and above everything, don’t judge 
it. Be pitiful, be tolerant, because we can 
never know. People do things, sometimes, 
they would give their lives to undo, and hav- 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 103 


mg done them, it is not always easy to go 
back.” 

She sought his eyes with a sort of pleading 
look which was very alluring. 

She wore black as usual and had a narrow 
black riband around her throat with a diamond 
pendant hanging from it. Peter watched it. 
It caught the light as it moved with the motion 
of her breathing. Her eyes contrasted with 
the perfection of her dress; they were softly 
vivid in their brightness. 

At that moment Peter felt very proud. He 
felt the touch of romance that such a beautiful 
woman should bother, should show as she 
seemed to show a genuine interest in his fu¬ 
ture. 

He gave a little laugh and said: 

“ So far I have lived like a young animal, 
a horse, or a pup. I have taken my oats, and 
galloped about some sedgy fields and tossed my 
head at the sky. I have never asked where my 
oats came from, or what was beyond the sky. 
Perhaps if I were more knowledgeable, more 


104 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 
chivalrous, you might like me? ” Peter was 
waiting for a final victory. 

Lady Gilchrist smiled, she could not help it. 
He was so young. Pere Formol’s thought was, 
“ What a fool youth is.” Lady Gilchrist 
thought, “ How wonderful youth is. It gives 
in full measure, with both hands.” And think¬ 
ing that, a smile came on her lips, a very 
strange smile. She, too, had given as youth 
gives, with both hands. She, too, had crossed 
the unconventional garden through the sedgy 
fields to the copse beyond. She had given and 
then—she had taken back. Like a bird when 
it flings itself upon the wind, up, up. Into the 
clouds she had gone by the way of the uncon¬ 
ventional garden. And then the interim and 
down—“ love wounds as we grasp it.” The 
sun’s pale streak was dipping under the 
twisted tree. 

44 Live as you have lived,” she said softly. 
44 In the open with the high sky. Don’t 
change.” 

Taking a parting look through the window 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 105 


she said hurriedly, “We must get back to 
Paris.” 

She went toward the door and Peter fol¬ 
lowed her. 


CHAPTER XV 


From the moment that Lady Gilchrist had 
told Peter she liked him as he was, boylike, he 
determined, if possible, to be more than he was. 
Peter’s mind could not detach itself from Lady 
Gilchrist. Through the work at the office, 
through the noise and bustle of his walks 
through the street, he was constantly thinking 
of her in the way a young man thinks of a 
woman who, though older than he is, is more 
charming than any woman he has so far met. 
“ What has her life been? What is it now? 
I like her,” he thought. “ I like her to the 
very roots of me. Well, I must act, somehow 
or other, so that she will like me.” What 
chance had he? He had met her in old For- 
mol’s threadbare shop. A general effect of 
down-at-heel-ness unenlivened by a master¬ 
piece. “ A woman of great refinement, of 

taste,” he thought, “ who would demand high 
106 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 107 

standards in her friends.” He was lucky to 
have met her, but it was whimsical that he 
should have met her there. Pere Formol had 
always struck him as being a bit of a mongrel 
—not quite pure bred. And as if seeking to 
gain a clear idea of her, he went over it again. 
“ Why had she gone to see old Formol? ” The 
words were startled out of him. She had 
known him in his happy days, when his best 
bred side was uppermost and she was sorry 
for him. Kindness of heart. That it was. A 
woman’s chivalry. The evidence in herself of 
what she had cautioned him, to trust the un¬ 
known and give the mongrel the benefit of the 
doubt. 

Very aptly, with a new zeal, he took the pa¬ 
pers on file at the office and went through 
them. 

That evening he dined with his friend the 
young Scotchman from the Embassy who was 
going on to the opera. Peter therefore was 
left to spend the evening alone. As he parted 
from his friend he strolled through the soft 


108 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

Paris night toward his home, communing with 
his dreams. His admiration and his wonder 
had come to life so quickly. He saw her be¬ 
fore him with her soft dark glance. 

What would he do with his evening? Drop 
in on old Formol. He would be in his work¬ 
shop, or else up-stairs in his little salon. “ He 
really suffers,” Peter said to himself. “ I 
ought not to judge him. I do not know the 
things that have embittered him.” Peter’s in¬ 
stinct shook his head, but Peter’s chivalry 
nodded. He would drop in and discuss this 
new acid, let him explain the process and get 
it off his chest. Besides, in a flash the real 
reason of his going went through him. “ I am 
a humbug,” he thought. “ I am going because 
he may speak of her.” 

He reached the doorway of old Formol’s 
shop. He had evidently returned from the 
Cafe; there was a light inside. Peter tapped 
on the door, tried the handle and walked in. 
The minute he entered, he realized he ought to 
have waited until he had been told to come in. 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 109 


Pere Formol was standing with his back to the 
door; his head was thrown back and from a 
folded white paper he had just poured a fine, 
white powder upon his tongue. As he turned 
to see who it was, his brow was wrinkled, a net¬ 
work as though the thoughts within were all 
running criss-cross. “ I thought it was 
Na-Na,” he said. “ It used to be the custom 
to knock at a door before entering.” 

The remark revived Peter’s feeling of an¬ 
tagonism. 

“ Well,” he said, “ what have you got to say 
for yourself? ” 

“ Oh,” answered Peter, “ I dropped in to 
have a smoke with you, but if you aren’t feel¬ 
ing up to it-” 

“ Up to it, why shouldn’t I be up to it? ” 

Catching sight of the disgruntled expres¬ 
sion in Pere Formol’s face, Peter thought, 
“ He made a wrong get-up this morning. I’ll 
smooth him down and send him back to bed 
on the right side.” And Peter, perfectly igno¬ 
rant of the feelings which he created in the 



110 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

older man, watched him with a smile in his 
eyes. “ I can but try/’ he said to himself 
softly. Both remained silent. Peter sat down 
and lighted a cigarette. 44 There is one thing 
that you want,” said Pere Formol acidly. 

“ And what is that? ” 

“ A faint conception of other people’s lives. 
The monotonous selfishness of your own life 
obsesses you. You get up. You think every¬ 
one else ought to get up. You go to bed and 
it is 4 lights out ’ for the whole of Paris. It is 
plain as a pikestaff you know nothing about 
life. Great God, is there anything as blind as 
youth? ” 

Peter stared at Pere Formol in amazement. 

44 Well, the fact is,” Pere Formol continued, 
44 age is not so selfish. I have been worrying 
about your future.” 

44 What? ” exclaimed Peter. All at once it 
occurred to him that Pere Formol Avas not 
quite himself. 

44 You think,” continued Pere Formol, 
44 that life is a little flower garden, filled with 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 111 


flowers. Red, yellow, blue, lilac and white 
blossoms grow in the long glasses.” Pere 
Formol bowed gravely to him as he lighted the 
pipe which he had filled. “ A lark is singing 
in the wide heaven and across the meadow there 
is the sunset. The foolish illusions of youth. 
The essence of life is disillusion. In reality 
the birds have a ruffled plumage and the gar¬ 
den is dark. And you, the would-be knight, 
have thorns and thistles that you wot not of. 

“ Ha! Ha! ” he said as he sank into a chair. 

“ Look here,” said Peter suddenly, “ if I 
jar you like this, I had better go.” 

“ My good fellow, don’t be silly. Besides 
I have something to say to you. Something 
very important to say-” he repeated look¬ 

ing round him at the shadows in the room. 
“ Sooner or later,” he continued as if to him¬ 
self, “ everyone comes to disillusion. That is 
the only way out. Belief is rubbish. Disillu¬ 
sion is truth; the acceptance of the facts of life 
as they are. Disillusion brings death and death 
is rest.” 



112 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

Peter pricked up his ears at this. Poor old 
Formol must be ill. He had a fever, perhaps. 
His thoughts were rambling. He would be 
patient with him, treat him gently. 

“ Rest from the long struggle of life. Life 
comes up from the earth. Rodin called it ‘ The 
Dream.’ It takes possession of the individual, 
making of him for a moment a temple, where 
the instincts of good and bad struggle to¬ 
gether, and then as the incense rises to heaven, 
life passes on to the sky. The soul, the incense, 
rises to heaven. The temple, the body, crum¬ 
bles upon the earth.” 

“ Poor beggar,” Peter thought, “ he is ill 
and unhappy.” 

For some time Pere Formol sat drawing at 
intervals puffs of smoke from his pipe. 

“ Tell me,” he asked after a time softly, as 
if his mood had changed, “ if you believe in 
life, what would you make of her? What are 
your ambitions? What would you do?” A 
light with a reflector on the wall threw its light 
on Pere Formol. 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 113 

‘‘ What are your ambitions,” he repeated, 
“ what would you do? ” 

And Peter, full of the new thought of what 
he meant to do in the world, drank in this re¬ 
quest greedily and prepared to reply to it. He 
recalled how suddenly he had made up his 
mind to settle down to seriously being of use 
to the government. To be painstaking and 
alert, to be intelligent and on the lookout for 
a chance to render service and so advance. 
Peter felt elated. He did not watch his audi¬ 
ence. He was full of his own new determina¬ 
tion to advance. Ideas and possibilities 
crowded into his brain. “ There are no 
limits,” he said excitedly. “ There are no 
limits.” 

Pere Formol nodded and his eyes looked 
unusually bright. He sat in his chair the prey 
of a jealous ache. He gazed like a man ac¬ 
customed all his life to find the black spot 
somewhere. 

Pere Formol took a couple of puffs at his 
pipe, and scrutinized Peter’s keen face with 


114 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 
his crafty eyes. “ Have you ever wondered 
who your parents were? ” he asked presently. 

Peter bowed his head. 

“ Bland told me,” he said. “ My mother 
was as lovely a woman as ever stepj)ed into 
Mayfair. I have often thought about her. 
As a matter of fact I don’t know exactly 
where, but she must have died when I was a 
baby. I don’t remember her at all.” 

Pere Formol whose little eyes were partic¬ 
ularly alert pressed the subject. 

“ And your father,” he asked, “ do you know 
anything about your father? ” 

In Peter’s memory something turned up. 

“ I remember what Bland used to say,” he 
said with a smile. “ ‘ Your father, young sir, 5 
Bland used to say, ‘ your father, you are better 
without.’ ” 

A voice like the voice of a stranger said, 
“ Oh, he did, did he? ” 

Peter looked around to see whether there 
was anyone else in the room. 

“ He did, did he? ” It was the voice of a 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 115 

man who takes revenge, who rises from long 
sitting to pay a final score. Pere Formol gave 
a little laugh. 

“ And so all these years you have thought 
your father dead? ” Pere Formol sat forward 
looking at Peter out of his little yellow eyes. 

“ My father is dead,” said Peter slowly. 

“Not yet, but not long now. Disillusion is 
death—I am your father.” 

Peter passed his hand over his forehead to 
get rid of the feeling of unreality. 

“ I am your father,” repeated Pere Formol. 

Peter saw Pere Formol staring at him and 
a desperate struggle began within him. A 
struggle against the temptation to get up and 
take Pere Formol by the shoulders and tell 
him that he lied. Tell him that in God’s good 
world, no young man with his instincts, his 
hopes, his aspirations, his ideals, could have 
such a father. 

How hateful, how horrible, how odious the 
idea was. “ It is a lie,” said Peter, “ it is a 
lie.” 


116 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

Pere Formol laughed. 

“No man,” said Pere Formol, “ in all the 
generations has been allowed the privilege of 
choosing his father. A man’s father is chosen 
by the gods.” 

“ Or the devil,” said Peter, as he grabbed 
his hat and rushed away from the room. 


CHAPTER XVI 

A sense of defeat—of being defrauded of 
something which he had just attained, lashed 
Peter to a kind of fury. Melancholy he rushed 
away up to his own room. He felt he dare not 
trust himself with Pere Formol at that mo¬ 
ment. He would hit him in the face, hurl in¬ 
sults upon him because although he kept say¬ 
ing to himself it was absurd; in his hones, his 
heredity, he felt Pere Formol’s statement was 
true. The disillusion was there mounting to 
his mind at a touch. He had wanted to be 
something to Lady Gilchrist, her friend, her 
“ knight.” Chaffingly she had called him a 
young knight. And now, this was spoiled, his 
pride was wounded, he was only Pere For¬ 
moFs son. By the shade of her manner he 
had seen that she thought nothing of old For¬ 
mol. He did not count as even a threadbare 
117 


118 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

artist may count, if the dream is bright within, 
if his armour is ever clean, bright, untarnished. 
With no spot upon his consciousness to be 
picked on by the world. 

“ Beware of modern life,” says Rodin, “ it 
kills dreams.” The something divine, the di¬ 
vine push upwards to the stars. The thing 
which causes a beggar to become king. Where 
was the good genius of Gilly Collins in the day 
of his adversity, the angel to bear him up lest he 
dash his foot against a stone, the wise spirit to 
caution though the day go against him, the bat¬ 
tle is never lost. “ Keep in the day of discour¬ 
agement thy armour bright, thy soul strong, 
so in the end shall those who have forsaken 
thee return.” 

It was the spot that Peter visioned upon the 
armour that lashed him to a furious rebellion 
to deny this man as his father. 

The rumble of the traffic in the streets came 
in through the open window. His mother, 
“ the prettiest lady that ever stepped into May- 
fair,” that was rot, of course, old Bland’s tale. 


THAT .WHICH IS PASSED 119 


No woman that he imagined would have cast 
her lot in with Pere Formol. Peter groaned; 
there the blow struck him. It died hard, the 
memory of his mother as he had imagined her. 
A thought always in blossom within himself. 
His heart ached suddenly because this new 
reality, this grim thing that was true had 
stripped him of his fairy tale. It killed dream. 
He remembered seeing a swallow flying high, 
up, up, with his song, away with its music to 
the distant sky and then some wanton gun had 
caught it, stopped the music and down came 
the songster, the soarer, a bunch of blood¬ 
stained feathers and a frightened beating 
heart. 

“ Blow, bugles, blow! ” 

The black wings spread and swallowed up 
the little songs. Life’s lyric a gold speck lost 
from the sky. The ceaseless swathe cutting 
ceaselessly into man’s wide peace. Life the 
laying asleep of the waving grasses. So go— 
“ with unreluctant tread,” life’s dear illusions, 
the small fetiches hard clung to, the hopes that 


120 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 
we have wrapped ourselves around. “ Blow, 
bugles, blow! ” 

And in the rainbow-tinted hues of purple 
shadow Peter parted with his cherished fairy 
tale, “ As pretty a maid as ever stepped into 
Mayfair.” He screwed his knuckles into his 
hot eyes. “ Rot,” he said, “ hell, hell, rot.” 


CHAPTER XVII 


Beside his window looking out on the cob¬ 
bled street Peter thought : “ Yes, I had some¬ 
thing. I was proud of something apart from 
everything else, hidden away in me, and now 
—it is brought out into the light. I have not 
got it any more.” 

Memories of his boyhood in Brittany drifted 
through his mind. He saw himself racing 
across the sands to some high rocks, that held 
a little ledge overlooking the sea. He saw him¬ 
self taking off his jersey and laying it on the 
top of a young growing tree that grew from 
the earth, then bending the top of the tree until 
it curved and in its young strong suppleness 
made a kind of spring that moved with his 
body. He saw himself face downward look¬ 
ing out at the sea-birds that moved against the 
sky. That ledge of rocky earth had been his 
refuge when things in life for which he was 

not responsible hurt him. It was up there first 

121 


122 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

he had imagined his mother to be a veritable 
king’s daughter, beautiful, high-born. Pie re¬ 
membered it was after one of Bland’s visits 
and Bland’s staccato remark had given him the 
idea. It was there with the possession of that 
idea that he became content to do without her. 
“ Of course, he couldn’t have her, she was be¬ 
yond him.” They told him she had died and 
he understood it was inevitable that she should 
not be there with him, a little boy brought up 
by Na-Na. “ Of course not.” So his beau¬ 
tiful mother became his illusion. The thing 
inside himself that he lived for and after he 
left Brittany, she, the thought of her, was the 
ledge above the sea where the wind blows 
softly from the sky. 

When he grew up and his mind was trained 
to apply his own experiences to the experi¬ 
ences of others, he knew that everybody, that 
is everybody who tries however vainly to hold 
his course on the track of life, everybody has 
his ledge, his refuge, his illusion, the idea within 
himself, to which he goes for strength. 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 123 

“ Cut it out,” Peter had often said to him¬ 
self apropos of something; “ my mother’s son 
wouldn’t do it.” 

And now the sadness that had fallen upon 
him like a hurt in his heart was that this, his 
compass, the thing he took the stars by for 
direction, was torn out of him; he saw the gap¬ 
ing roots. 

He remembered a line of Rupert Brooks. 
“ Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.” 
What matter the deluge, the sorrows that 
flowed over a man, provided only he were blest 
by “ suns of home ” ? 

Then Peter said out loud: “ I won’t have old 
Formol for my father. I won’t have him. 
What beautiful woman would link her life 
with old Formol? ” Peter had never seen 
Gilly Collins walk down the Oxford High. 

And again out of the darkness the thought, 
“ I will visit the sins of the fathers upon the 
children.” “ I won’t have him,” said Peter to 
himself. “ The things that are like him in my¬ 
self I will tear out.” 


124 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

“ White powders. Shiftiness, failure, I 
won’t have him.” 

Suddenly there was a tap at the door. It 
was Na-Na come to turn down the bed. 

Peter jumped up and went and put his arms 
around the old peasant. 

“ Na-Na,” he said, “ Na-Na, did you ever 
see my mother? ” 

“ God have mercy, what’s the matter? ” 

“ Did you ever see her? ” 

“ Of course I saw her.” 

“And she was beautiful, Na-Na?” 

“ Like a rose.” 

“ And good? ” (tentatively). 

“ Like the mother of God.” 

“ You swear it? ” 

“ By all the Blessed Saints.” 

“ God help you, Na-Na. You wouldn’t lie.” 

Peter went stumbling to the window to hide 
his tears. 

Furtively, mysteriously Fate unwinds the 
skeins of life. 


PART II 


WIND AND RAIN 











CHAPTER XVIII 


It was sometime after her arrival in Paris 
that Lady Gilchrist invited Ann Trevelyan to 
tea. She announced her coming to a rather 
bored Jocelyn. A Jocelyn with the “ I won’t 
be bored ” instinct very decidedly developed. 
He attempted remonstrance, but she waved 
him aside. Her armoury against any objec¬ 
tion he might put forth being quite adequate. 
“ Why do you have her? ” he asked. “ I sup¬ 
pose you like to turn her inside out.” 

Lady Gilchrist interposed sharply. 

“ No. That is not true. Poor Ann. She is 
‘ turned inside out ’ already. Everyone knows 
the worst about Ann Trevelyan.” 

Sir Jocelyn growled. “ In reason, a decent 
man takes the woman’s side, but Ann was, I 
think, unnecessarily foolish. In the first place 
she was spoilt. In the second she thought of 
no one but herself.” 


127 


128 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

Lady Gilchrist seemed distressed at Sir 
Jocelyn’s attitude. 

“ She was certainly in love with poor Percy 
when she married him.” 

Sir Jocelyn crossed one leg over the other 
and swung the upper leg up and down with a 
decided swing from the knee. 

“ Of course she was in love with him, my 
dear. She loved him as everyone loves a pres¬ 
ent member of the aristocracy;—‘ people must 
love him because of his expression.’ I remem¬ 
ber when she met him. It was Lady Wither- 
mere’s first reception of the season; you and I 
had been married a year and Ann Trevelyan 
came up to town to stay with us until her peo¬ 
ple opened their house. We asked Percy to 
dinner. He fought off, but later at the re¬ 
ception I buttonholed him and said, ‘ You are 
canaille, Percy; you must take this female 
guest off my hands.’ I remember the great 
laugh he gave and his answer. 

“ ‘ If I do, Jossy, St. Margaret’s will be 
crowded.’ And then to think he married her 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 129 


after all. He was a ripper to look at, with his 
head of golden hair. He was like wheat. He 
hadn’t a chance from the moment Ann Trevel¬ 
yan laid eyes on him. She marked him down 
at the introduction.” 

“ Why are you so down on Ann, Jocelyn? ” 

“ Because I was pretty keen on old Percy. 
His reckless escapades were most of them 
harmless. In the last generation his sort 
played faro all night and went to a division in 
the House next morning. I remember his 
toast, the one he proposed if you had a drink 
with him at the Club. It was called Bosca- 
wen’s toast. ‘ Black eyes, blue eyes, brown 
eyes. No decent man resists a pretty woman. 
We play up to ’em with our last breath.’ And 
then he’d tell me I’d have been an old joss- 
stick if I hadn’t married you, but having done 
it—(click, click on the glass) I was forever 
good old Jossy.” 

“ Jocefyn,” said Lady Gilchrist, “all we 
Boscawens have a queer streak. Am I like 
him? ” 


130 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

“ In a way, yes. And yet when Percy had 
seen the Gorgon's head, he turned sick with 
horror. Funked the very thing he had been 
leading up to.” 

“ Would I do that? ” softly. 

“ No, Mary, I think if you were led up to 
it, you would face the music. You are impul¬ 
sive, but never mad, or monstrous. I remem¬ 
ber an afternoon sitting in the window of my 
Club in Piccadilly watching the world go by. 
I saw Percy get out of a hansom and come up 
the Club steps. He came straight to the place 
where I was sitting. He looked excited and 
anxious. 

“ ‘ Jossy,’ he said, ‘ I've just bought a house 
in Portland Place.’ 

“ ‘ Whatever for? ’ 

“ 4 Well, ye see there is going to be a great 
crush at St. Margaret’s after all. I am going 
to marry Ann.’ 

“No use telling him he couldn’t afford it 
and that he was making straight for the bank¬ 
ruptcy court. Ann had him in her maw and 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 131 

the only way for him to get her was to walk 
through St. Margaret’s with her. Ann had it 
all planned, with her turned-up nose and her 
square chin.” 

Lady Gilchrist laughed nervously. “ Poor 
Ann,” she said, “ you are down on her.” 

“ No woman has a right to prefer her child 
to her husband.” 

“ I wonder if it isn’t better,” Lady Gilchrist 
seemed anxious to convince him. “ You see the 
child is helpless, young. It needs its chance. 
I have always thought a mother’s love over¬ 
rated (my mother preferred the boys), but 
supposing it isn’t. Supposing it means some¬ 
thing after all, gives the child a better chance, 
greater confidence, a certain strong warmth. 
I have never thought of this until lately.” She 
broke off suddenly as though her own words 
were carrying her away. She looked at him, 
her sombre eyes dark with perplexity. 

“ It is all very difficult,” Jocelyn Gilchrist 
said quietly. So quietly, that an onlooker 
might have supposed he were putting an extra 


132 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

check on himself. “ But as for Ann, I can’t 
meet her. I’ll stroll up to the Travellers’ 
Club and drink Percy’s toast, ‘ black eyes, blue 
eyes, brown eyes’; funnily enough he never 
mentioned Ann’s eyes. They are green. It 
must have been premonition. It is funny how 
one remembers things. That party was one of 
Lady Withermere’s best nights. At first it 
seemed as if the thing wouldn’t go. And then 
around eleven, that woman came whose pres¬ 
ence always meant the thing was sure to be a 
success. You remember—a great friend of the 
Prince of Wales. There was a foreign prin¬ 
cess too; she stayed until near the end. Those 
were the days, my dear, those were the days. 
Who would have thought that was the Brus¬ 
sels ball to Percy’s Waterloo? ” 

Someone rapped on the door of the sitting- 
room. “ That is Ann,” he said in a whisper. 
“ I’ll go through here.” He opened the door 
of the dressing-room and passing from sight 
closed it behind him. 


CHAPTER XIX 

Lady Gilchrist rose with a lazy gesture 
and went to open the door. If you have ever 
heard the south wind fanning itself against an 
aperture and finally conceded sufficiently to 
open the aperture and allow it to enter, you 
will have some idea of what happened when 
Lady Gilchrist opened the door of her sitting- 
room at the Ritz and allowed Ann Boscawen 
to come in. There was a soft, prolonged gur¬ 
gle of ejaculations intermixed with little cries, 
a rush forward, as of a tropical bird of para¬ 
dise and the very real brush on Lady Gilchrist’s 
cheek of an English pheasant’s plume. “ Dar¬ 
ling Mary,” cried the intruder, having discov¬ 
ered her hostess and rushing at her—ecstati¬ 
cally allowing for the broad brims of hats, “ to 
think of our meeting in Paris in just this way. 

As I said to Daphne, ‘ Fancy your Aunt Mary 
133 


134 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

is in Paris/ Fortunately I have a very defi¬ 
nitely marked life line and I can stand the little 
surprises life is constantly giving one. So much 
in the hand, my dear. In fact it is all there; 
we really have no chance to decide anything for 
ourselves. Daphne has been studying music 
in Paris. She is a pianist. Perhaps, not quite 
a musician. Still the world is so stupid, it may 
never find out.” All this breathlessly, without 
drawing breath. 

Lady Gilchrist smiled and shook her head. 
She closed the door. “ I hope it is all right, 
my coming straight up. The man in the office 
said you expected me, but of course there 
is nothing more stupid than a man in an 
office.” 

“ Dear Ann,” said Lady Gilchrist, guiding 
her to a chair. “ It is so nice to see you. For 
three weeks I have been reduced to the com¬ 
panionship of Jossy.” 

“ Yes, men are ignorant of lots of things. 
There are so many things vital to a woman just 
now. And there is that new tight line of the 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 135 

skirt just below the flanks. It is the invention 
of the devil. No woman over forty can look 
well in it. You can’t be perfectly frank with 
a man about that. If you told him it was the 
fashion and showed it on one of those manne¬ 
quins that are just in the pink of perfection 
like a rose that falls to-morrow, he would say, 
‘ Well, order it.’ And he would resent it that 
you didn’t look so well as the mannequin. 
‘ Reculer pour mieux sauter ’ is a thing no 
man understands. Yes, Mary. Men are a 
great strain. Fancy just having Jossy for 
three weeks.” 

Lady Gilchrist pulled up the cushion and 
put it at the back of her head. “ Now,” she 
said, “ tell me all about yourself.” 

Lady Boscawen settled the veil around her 
hat. 

“ Ah, yes. I know. Some years after when 
two beautiful children had been born to 
them-” 

“ Don’t be ridiculous, Ann, I really want to 
know.” 



136 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

“ I wonder,” she answered in a deeper voice, 
“ but you are a Boscawen; perhaps for the mo¬ 
ment you do.” 

And then in a moment, “ You must see 
Daphne. She is Boscawen, Boscawen ‘ pur.’ 
If you want to know about me. It isn’t about 
myself I may talk, but about Daphne. 
Daphne is Boscawen and yet Daphne is me.” 
Again she broke off and withdrew within her¬ 
self quickly. 

But when anyone refused to tell Mary Gil¬ 
christ what she asked, she immediately began 
to suspect that there was really something to 
tell. 

“ I am so glad,” she said, “ Daphne is turn¬ 
ing out quite all that you had hoped. If one 
took one’s opinions from books one would be 
sure that parenthood was a sadly disappointing 
state. The young nowadays seem not only to 
lack the interest one finds in older people, but 
their one idea is to go their own way and kick 
over any parental claims.” 

Lady Boscawen had taken off her glove and 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 137 


was touching the end of her pheasant’s plume 
with very meditative fingers. 

“ In spite of our long friendship, we don’t 
always agree,” she said slowly. 

“ No, of course not.” Lady Gilchrist’s eyes 
looked troubled. That last remark had to be 
parried. 

“ Ann,” she said, “ have you heard anything 
about Percy? ” 

“ Percy? ” Ann Boscawen shook her head. 
“ Sometimes when the English paj>ers come in, 
I look them over to see if they contain any al¬ 
lusion to his movements. ‘ Sir Percy Bos¬ 
cawen has left for Scotland. Among the 
guests on Algy Strode’s yacht at Cowes was 
Sir Percy Boscawen, or Sir Percy Boscawen 
was noticed among the successful backers at 
Goodwood.’ Percy is somehow always in the 
thick of it. You know, Mary, the Duchess of 
Leinsley has asked me to a shooting party she 
is giving for the Prince of Wales. It is so 
dear of her.” 

“ It is always so strange to me,” said Lady 


138 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

Gilchrist smiling. “ You have known smart 
people all your life, played with them, stayed 
with them and yet you have never got quite 
accustomed to them. Only to-day Jossy was 
talking of the first big reception the Wither- 
meres gave. Some weird suspense hung on it; 
no one knew how it was going until suddenly 
that woman came, whose coming always meant 
that the entertainment was a success. She 
gave the hall-mark, as it were. Lady Wither- 
mere told me the most thankful prayer she 
ever offered in her life was when she saw her. 
Society Ann, with a big ‘ S,’ but isn’t it absurd 
for people who have always been in it to feel 
like that? ” 

Ann Boscawen’s finely chiselled lips parted 
slightly. “Absurd? No, it is not absurd. The 
passion for pleasure keeps one young. People 
who wave a deprecating hand at the world 
think they are so profound. They are just 
being stupid. A little social triumph does me 
far more good than a sermon from Father 
Vaughan. 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 139 


“ Besides that,” the pheasant’s plume waved 
triumphantly, “ we have our standards, for all 
that the middle class may say of us. We go 
down with all flags flying. We are game to 
the last.” 

The waiter came in bringing tea. And over 
their teacups the two women exchanged opin¬ 
ions upon the constantly changing fashions, 
the salon, the idea of the Russian Ballet, the 
latest engagement announced in the Morning 
Post, all the movements, the ripples which 
show the life of the ocean of their existence, 
and which give it the beauty of its own quick¬ 
ening. Like the city poet of Paris, who had 
traversed all the country of France, but whose 
songs were the songs of the city. So they had 
seen other lives, but the intimacies revealed in 
their chatter were the changing undulations 
that affected the manners, habits and customs 
of their every-day life. 

“ No, my dear,” said Lady Boscawen, going 
back irrelevantly to what they had been dis¬ 
cussing and holding a marron glace a little 


140 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 
way from her mouth. “ I have no patience 
with the pushing of some wretched little par¬ 
venu with a stuffy little brain like the little 
‘ back parlor ’ where she really belongs, but 
any well-bred woman who knows the game and 
the jargon may push all she likes; more power 
to her, I say. I’d not only cheer her, but help 
her. What people call shallowness, I call hero¬ 
ism, and what they call rottenness, I call 
romance.” 

“ You are the same as ever. You are very 
real, Ann. One thing you always stand up for 
your set.” 

“ I don’t know about that, but I am a world¬ 
ling and I’ll be a worldling to my last breath. 
They say the French poets, some of them, have 
an actual love for la ville, le quartier, les 
tavernes, les rotisseries; the very smells that are 
nauseating to our fine noses are their inspira¬ 
tion. Well, the world is like that to me. I 
like it, just as it is, without any change. I am 
flying through the years now, like the ‘ White 
Queen ’ in Alice. Faster. Faster. Faster. 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 141 


But I love every day, every hour from dawn 
until dark. Even this marron glace because 
it is mine becomes the most peerless in the box. 
Tell me-” 

She stopped because Mary Gilchrist was 
laughing at her. Ann bent forward on her 
chair and sat looking at her hostess. 

“ Well, what is it? ” Lady Mary asked her. 

“ Are you always quite satisfied with your 
philosophy—Mary—with your decisions? ” 

Lady Mary’s hands began to move nerv¬ 
ously, restlessly. She moved against the cush¬ 
ion and patted her hair just above the ear. 

“ Do you never wonder if your thrusting 
aside of responsibility was quite fair, quite 
final—whether young as you undoubtedly 
were, you had quite the right? ” 

A cold, white look came into Lady Gil¬ 
christ’s face. “ I think if you don’t mind, I 
would rather not discuss it,” she said. 

Suddenly Ann laughed, a little silver ripple. 

“ Boscawen,” she said. “ I quite under¬ 
stand. The divine right of Boscawens and 


142 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 
kings. They probe into your poor little black 
silk shopping bag, but into their embroidered 
reticules you may not dip.” 

She began putting on her gloves. 

“ I must go now. Daphne will be waiting 
for me. I forgive you for your reticence, so 
don’t be stiff with me. I know you are not 
hiding anything from me. It is merely when 
you are done with a thing you put it away in 
lavender, and what goes into lavender never 
comes out. It was dear of you to look me up. 
You must see Daphne. I will write you a 
note and we will plan a meeting.” 

Both women stood up. 

“ You are looking so well, dear,” said Ann. 
“ You have youth in you. You will always 
have it. It is undying. For a woman that 
is so precious. Even the villainous new skirt, 
tight just below the flanks, invented by the 
devil, cannot spoil, or stiffen your natural 
litheness. Good-bye—Youth to a woman is 
everything. It has been nice to see you again. 
Youth keeps a kind of movement in us that 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 143 


men expect. A bird always on the wing. 
Give my love to Jossy. Tell him I know he 
went out because I was coming. Think of 
poor Jossy being afraid of my charm, still.” 

Lady Gilchrist had opened the door. Ann 
Boscawen tripped down the corridor and with 
a wave of her hand she was gone. 


CHAPTER XX 

“Ann has made a mess of her life and yet 
she is happy,”—that was the first thing Lady 
Gilchrist said to herself as she went back to 
her low easy chair. She went to the window to 
watch for Ann, to see her come out under the 
arcade. Presently, she saw her cocher, fat 
with round shoulders under his black glace hat, 
and behind him, her chin slightly lifted, the 
pheasant’s plume waving, sat Ann as if behind 
some royal livery. She thought as she stood 
looking down she heard too the distinct tinkle 
of Ann’s fiacre bell. “ Was it, could it be 
Daphne, that was responsible for the change 
in Ann? Was Daphne making her softer, 
more gentle? ” Lady Gilchrist closed the 
French window and smiling a little scornfully 
went back to her chair. “ It is true,” she 

thought, “ there can be nothing more interest- 
144 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 145 


ing than to hear a woman of the world tell her 
story.” With her elbow on the arm of the 
chair, her cheek in her hand, she thought of 
things that, to judge from the expression of 
her face, did not bring her peace. Still she 
pursued them unremittingly; there was no one 
there to interrupt her. She thought of her 
own life, her security, her charming house in 
England, the dignity, the perfect service, the 
greased wheels of her daily life. She thought 
of her acquaintances, her friends, the interest¬ 
ing people she had met and knew, her milieu, 
her environment. She had had, as they say in 
America, “ a lovely time.” She was the envy 
of a lot of her friends. She was a success. 
And yet once, no, twice in the last week she 
had wondered. The first time was when Peter 
was talking to her of his mother, the second 
was just a few moments before when in some 
peculiar way, shallow, vapid Ann had made 
her feel somehow not quite so superior, so 
above emotions as usual. Was it in a measure 
that she felt the charm of life in Paris? Was 


146 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

it that she had never quite surrendered? Never 
paid her full tribute? Late, or early, had lived 
always with a reticence, a reserve, she con¬ 
sidered was not to be encroached upon? And 
in her reserve she had avoided a smash, a 
cataclysm, the tearing of the veil of the sanc¬ 
tuary which allows a glimpse of the spirit. The 
real woman shining through the rent. That 
was Ann. Tatters. Shreds. The veil of the 
temple rent from seam to seam, but underneath 
who would think it? The glimpse of some¬ 
thing vital. A pulse beating with life. Per¬ 
versely it is the way of rents, that where one 
expects blackness, nothing; there is a spirit. 
A small living thing born in its own storm. 
When a woman has erred, made a mistake per¬ 
haps and then met the consequences, deep quiet 
things came out of the tempest, and from small 
natures even, there came the tiny spirit with 
its quickly beating pulse. 

Lady Gilchrist heard Sir Jocelyn open the 
door and she put her thoughts away. 

“ Well, Jossy,” she said without looking up. 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 147 

“ Ann has just gone. I thought she would 
probably stay until you came back. It is a 
pity you missed her; she is in great form. I 
can see from the way the light is reflected on 
the Statue of Vendome that it is late and I 
haven’t begun to change for dinner.” 

Sir Jocelyn gave a sort of grunt as he threw 
himself into the chair that Ann had just left. 

“ I thought Ann would never go,” he said. 
“ I came up and softly opened the door and 
hearing Ann say, ‘ What people call shallow¬ 
ness I call heroism,’ it was enough. I closed 
the door softly and betook myself to the long 
corridor that leads to the grill. It is a most 
interesting place full of samples from the shops 
in little glass cases. I had just picked up a 
card labelled the ‘ Princess Boroneuf—Her 
hats. Her dresses. Her gowns,’ when the 
bell-boy, whom I had presented with a franc 
and instructions to let me know when Ann 
took her departure, said ‘ La dame—elle est 
partie en fiacre.’ Well, Mary, how is the in¬ 
defatigable Ann? ” 


148 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

Lady Gilchrist was silent a moment and 
then—“ Ann has improved. Jossy,” she said, 
“ I think you aren't quite fair to her.” 

Sir Jocelyn looked interrogation. 

“ I mean that Ann is so improved. Time 
has mellowed her. She takes life quite au 
grand serieux.” Her championage did not 
seem convincing. Sir Jocelyn shook his head. 

“ You look done up,” he said. “ It is nearly 
dinner time and you haven’t begun to change. 
Supposing we have a Bohemian dinner in day 
clothes in Montmartre? ” 

Lady Gilchrist stared at him. “ I should 
love it, but it is rather unlike you. Are you 
suggesting it because you think I should like 
it, or would you like it yourself? ” 

He looked at her whimsically, a smile hover¬ 
ing round his small gray eyes. 

“At least give me the benefit of the doubt. 
Surely you might pretend I am taking you 
because I think it might amuse you.” 

She gave a slight shrug and held up her 
hand. 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 149 
“ Does a man take a woman to Montmartre 
to amuse her when he has been married to her 
for twenty-five years? ” 

“Why not give him the benefit of the 
doubt? I thought of dining in the Place du 
Tertre. Will you come? ” 

She nodded. 

“ I’ll put on another dress to rest me,” she 
said, “ but I shan’t be long.” 

There was a depth in her answer of con¬ 
firmed palship. Almost a kind of unconscious 
luxury of habit, but the effect on Sir Jocelyn 
was to make him start like a bird fancier who 
hears a new note in a canary that he has kept 
for a long time. And to realize that the note 
surprises him, not because it is new, but be¬ 
cause for the moment he has expected an¬ 
other. Perfidious imagination that makes 
one expect what has not come in twenty-five 
years. 

Sir Jocelyn sat down tamely, took out his 
cigarette case and cast a look at the cigarettes 
inside and one side of the case being empty, he 


150 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 


went to a little red box labelled “ Savoury,” 
Piccadilly, and prepared to recharge it for the 
evening. Then lighting one he lay back in his 
chair and blew smoke rings at the ceiling. 
And as he sat there he was thinking of a filly 
for which he had given two hundred guineas 
and which had developed some disease and had 
had to be shot. “ Damn queer thing, the fe¬ 
male sex,” he said to himself; “ you can’t count 
on ’em.” How mysterious they were and how 
uncertain; when one strayed to personalities 
one got this feeling of general unrest. Sex. 
Dreams. Cigarette smoke. He watched the 
blue rings curling upwards. 

Lady Gilchrist came into the room. She 
had changed to a simple dress of black, dull 
clinging material. She wore a large brimmed 
hat. 

“ Ought we to go? ” she asked, putting on a 
glove. 

“ Perhaps we ought,” he replied, throwing 
away his cigarette. 

He looked at her a moment, then taking her 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 151 


wrap, he followed her out of the room and 
down the hall. 

Down-stairs they got into a taxi and drove 
along the Rue de la Paix toward the Avenue 
de l’Opera on their way to Montmartre. They 
went behind the opera house and followed 
the Chaussee d’Antin up to the rue St. La- 
zare. 

“ I know the Chaussee d’Antin,” said Lady 
Gilchrist. “ I always get my corsets here.’* 

Then on up the rue Blanche to a narrow 
street that looked like a long winding hill 
winding up to La Butte. For a moment, 
against the pink mist of sunset, they had 
caught a glimpse of the white dome of the 
Sacre Coeur and then it was lost to sight as 
their taxi began to make the ascent of a cob¬ 
bled hill. 

“ Montmartre,” said Sir Jocelyn, “ is a lit¬ 
tle municipality of its own. It is not Paris. 
It is different. It is Montmartre. We are go¬ 
ing to dine at the Place du Tertre. I believe 
it was the scene of the opera Louise. It has a 


152 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 
very good view. You can see Paris light up 
and the moon rise.” 

The taxi had almost stopped and was mak¬ 
ing some very disgruntled sounds. 

Sir Jocelyn sat back. “ I don’t think you 
need be nervous,” he said; “the taxicabs of 
Paris always make their goal.” 

For a few seconds they made a great noise, 
but they did not lose ground, then gradually 
the machine began to work its way up the hill. 

After passing through two very narrow in¬ 
tersecting streets, the taxi came out on a little 
square just behind the Sacre Coeur. As Sir 
Jocelyn was searching in his pockets to find 
change for the taxi, Lady Gilchrist looked 
about her. The square was surrounded on four 
sides by old-fashioned five-story buildings. 
The evening being warm some of the windows 
were opened and over their wrought iron rail¬ 
ings leaned from some of them the tenants, the 
inmates drawn to the window to watch with 
curiosity the life of the Place du Tertre. 
From one corner came the street by which they 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 153 


had come, from the corner diagonally opposite 
a street went to the back of the Sacre Cceur. 
Lady Gilchrist’s eyes travelled up past the lit¬ 
tle balconies, window-sills with gratings to the 
sky where the dying sun had left a pink mist, 
that stretched above the trees like a diaphanous 
curtain. The night though warm was not hot 
enough to be breathless. On the side of the 
square to which they had come tables were 
already set, on the pavement, in the road it¬ 
self and in the square; waiters, gar<;ons with 
serviettes over their arms made their way from 
the little Cafe where the orders were executed 
among the tables. 

With a hasty look about her, it seemed to 
Lady Gilchrist that though this life were re¬ 
moved from her by a strata, or two, neverthe¬ 
less it concerned her. It was not like the other 
places she had already visited. It was some¬ 
thing of itself not put on the stage for the 
tourist, but real, a natural growth. A waiter 
spying two clients who looked better dressed 
than most of the habitues led them to a table 


154 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 
not far from the cafe, “ La carte he vanished 
to return with a menu written with much flour¬ 
ish. 

“ Remember the modus vivendi, order sim¬ 
ple things and not too much.” 

“ Potage,” said Sir Jocelyn. 

“ Poulet Roti, Pommes? Anna,” suggested 
the waiter. 

Sir Jocelyn nodded. “ Salad et un bon vin.” 

“ Chateau Yquem? Bon.” 

“ Tres bon.” 

“ Eh! bien. Pour commencer.” 

Although it was only half-past seven, they 
were late. Most of the tables were already 
taken. The entertainment had already begun. 
Lady Gilchrist put her elbows on the table 
and leaned forward to see the musician who 
had taken up his position not far from her. 
She had noticed him walking about with a slim, 
dark-eyed girl holding a baby in her arms. 
The musician could not have been more than 
twenty. He was a violinst with the fever of 
early phthisis just below his eyes, but with, in 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 1 55 


spite of his hollow chest, his ill nourished body, 
hope not gone out of his eyes. He played, his 
pale young face uplifted to the darkening sky 
of Paris, a nocturne of Chopin. And as he 
played his own music retouched his features, 
drew them in sharp line, uplifted them to the 
ideal. He stopped and as the diners put down 
their knives and forks to clap, a look of exalta¬ 
tion came into his face, the look on the face of 
young art that believes it cannot fail. 

“ Clap him, Jossy,” said Lady Gilchrist. 
“ What chance has he? Isn’t it pitiful? No 
health and a wife and child. Oh, Jossy.” 

Encouraged by the applause of the audi¬ 
ence, he played again and then taking a plate 
from one of the tables and accompanied by his 
wife carrying the child he made the rounds of 
the tables. Lady Gilchrist suddenly put out 
her hand and touched her husband’s. “ Give 
him something. Something worth while. 
Enough to really help. He is so delicate, so 
young, so sure to be hurt.” And as they came 
to the table she caught her two hands up to her 


156 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 


breast with the convulsive impulsive gesture 
she had. As they passed on a little breeze 
touched the leaves of the trees, a sudden flight 
of fancy loosed. 

That instant Lady Gilchrist raised her eyes 
and read the inscriptions on the building op¬ 
posite. Imposing. “ Hotel du Tertre.” And 
underneath “ Les Vins de Bergerac.” And 
“ Biere des Aiglons.” “ Noces. Restaurant. 
Banquets.” And again on the other side to 
repeat and balance. “ Biere des Aiglons.” 
And then her eye travelled up to a stone in the 
middle. 


Le PoHe Beaugeron 
Gaston Coute 
1880-1911 
Habite cette Maison 

The little tablet stood out the more by reason 
of its contrasting notices. “ Le Poete Beau¬ 
geron.” Did it not conjure some pretence to 
the imagination? It trembled to an effect of 
its own. An entrance with swinging coat- 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 157 


tail into the hall of life. A young god come 
to Babylon. And then the eye dropped. “ Les 
Vins de Bergerac.” “ Noces. Restaurant. 
Banquets.” What measure of his verse did 
the poet reach? Lady Gilchrist had never 
heard of him, but at least he was become im¬ 
mortal in the Place du Tertre. 

Meanwhile the waiters edged along grazing 
the tables, calling back to some impatient 
guest, “ Un instant,” bringing plates balanced 
dexterously up a forearm, serving the gay and 
care-free clientele. A bare-headed girl came 
by with an oblong box and a buckled strap. 
She paused to listen to a man singing a song. 

“ Tout le monde baisse. Tout le monde 
baisse.” She understood it and passed on with 
a smile, a stray spirit of youth. 

The waiter brought a bottle covered by a 
blue mold. He twisted the label to Sir Joce¬ 
lyn’s sight and then triumphantly scratched the 
mold with his finger. “ Chateau Yquem— 
1911. Bon Yin. Bonne Annee.” Sir Joce¬ 
lyn nodded the “ Potage ” had been good. 


158 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

Chicken was always good. He prepared to 
enjoy himself. 

“ There has been no good vintage since 
1911,” he said. Two tables away two shock¬ 
headed, slouched-hatted men sat, each with a 
girl beside him. As the singer finished his song 
one of the girls put her arm around her man’s 
neck, pulled him toward her and gave him a 
kiss on the mouth. The crowd saw it and 
pointing gave a shout of laughter. “ Tout le 
monde baisse. Tout le monde baisse.” They 
took up the refrain and it echoed around the 
square. 

By this time quite a lot of people had come. 
Not only were all the tables filled, but outside 
their radius some loungers were standing 
watching the performance. It was growing 
dark and the light of a match struck for a 
cigarette suddenly shone out and mixed with 
the diffused gleam that came from the windows 
of the houses. 

They had noticed, standing a little apart 
from the artists who expected to perform, a 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 159 


man dressed like his brothers in shabby black, 
but standing apart from them individually as 
well as physically by reason of his intellectual 
uplifted expression. He carried in his hand 
a black leather case that resembled those car¬ 
ried by musicians when studying the score of 
some opera. The waiter whispered some 
words to Sir Jocelyn, who repeated it to his 
wife. “ They say that man once sang at ‘ La 
Scala.’ One of those queer beggars whose 
careers get nipped. He is to sing something 
from the Opera Louise. This you know is the 
scene.” 

Two of the diners had beckoned to the singer 
and he was standing talking to them with a 
certain dignity as befitted an artist who in 
spite of vicissitudes respects himself. 

In spite of herself Lady Gilchrist compared 
the young violinist and the old singer, the 
artist yet to find failure and the artist who had 
found it. 

“ You aren’t applauding,” said Sir Jocelyn 
suddenly. “ Don’t you like it? ” 


160 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

Lady Gilchrist smiled a little defiantly. 
“ Oh, yes. For the moment I was thinking 
what Rodin said about art. That ‘ Art is the 
translation of dreams into form.’ Watching 
these poor artists we become conscious that the 
world has done an indelicate thing in not help¬ 
ing them. They have dreams, but they have 
not enough power to bring them to life and 
we, the world, we hear the beating of wings 
and we do not help the flight. We do not help 
to bring their dreams to life. That young 
violinist, I shall never forget him.” 

“ These are back numbers,” said Sir Joce¬ 
lyn. 

“ Not the young one.” 

“ No,” he admitted, “ not the young one.” 

By the time the old opera singer stepped 
forward with his score, the crowd had given 
itself up to the spirit of the evening. The 
silhouette-cutter with his scissors had been 
sufficiently discouraged to stop coming round, 
and the street singer, like the exponent of 
“ Tout le monde baisse,” had given way to the 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 161 
more finished artist. The moment was, as it 
were, all that could be desired. Dancing to 
the wind the leaves trembled; one star had ap¬ 
peared to watch. 

The ex-opera singer stepped forward and 
bowed. Instantly, in contrast to the other per¬ 
formances, there was a hush, followed by the 
clapping of hands. The Parisian is apprecia¬ 
tive of a skilled performance, and the Paris 
evening itself took part in his reception. As 
has been said, he bowed, and at the cessation 
of applause of welcome he raised his chin, he 
lowered his eyelids and he sang as Caruso sang 
from the centre of his being from which, for 
want of a better term, one might call the “ solar 
plexis.” Malnutrition and the passing of the 
years had doubtless impaired the instrument, 
but the management, the technique were un¬ 
deniably good; people put their elbows on the 
table prepared to listen. This was unquestion¬ 
ably the guest of the evening in the Place du 
Tertre. 

And then from under the trees on the north 


162 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

of the square there came a cry. Instantly the 
song ceased. Instantly the old opera singer 
bowed his head and began to shuffle away. 
Glancing through the trees Sir Jocelyn saw 
two gendarmes. That had been the voice of 
the law; the old opera singer dare not disobey 
it. They called the waiter and asked for an 
explanation. The poor old artist would get no 
compensation. He was not getting a fair 
deal. He could not pass around the plate, but 
the waiter was non-communicative. Perhaps 
they, the law, had something against the singer. 
Perhaps it was merely the crowd had been 
growing too large. Since the days of the Rev¬ 
olution no mob had ever been allowed to gather 
in Paris. The gathering of people must never 
grow too large; that was dangerous. Did the 
gentleman see the wooden shutters on the win¬ 
dows all around the square? They were in 
case of a mob to prevent the glass from stones. 

With this incident the evening, which had 
so far been steadily increasing in interest, re¬ 
ceded. It had somehow been knocked on the 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 163 


head. From one or two of the tables the peo¬ 
ple having paid their bills departed, feeling 
that the chance of future interest was gone. 

Together the Gilchrists strolled down to the 
embankment beside the Sacre Coeur to take a 
look at Paris. Already it was dark. Paris 
had lighted up and the moon had risen. From 
where they stood they could see rather inti¬ 
mately into the lighted upper rooms of a house 
on the lower level. They saw a woman stand¬ 
ing between the window and the light undoing 
the buttons of her blouse. 

“ Well, my dear,” said Sir Jocelyn, “ and 
what do you think of Montmartre? ” 

Lady Gilchrist drew a long deep breath as 
she pressed her hands against the railing. 

“ Life without roots is sad, Jossy. It makes 
one thankful to be safe,” she said with a little 
gasp. 

Sir Jocelyn turned and looked at her profile 
outlined against the moonlit sky. 


CHAPTER XXI 


The interest of the neighborhood was 
stirred, and the brains of the people across the 
street fluttered with ideas. For three days 
Pere Formol had broken all his expected hab¬ 
its. The spectacle of his irregularity awoke 
them to discussion. 

Said Madame Paul, “ The Pere Formol has 
not appeared for three days.” 

Said Madame Taneyre, gazing across braz¬ 
enly and not trying to check her curiosity, “ I 
heard the gossip. It appears the old Swiss 
woman who does his washing told his fortune 
with the cards. It was ominous. And Pere 
Formol only laughed.” 

“ What did she say? ” 

Madame Taneyre was not as young as she 
had been, but she was attractive still and her 
comeliness was accentuated by her animation 
as she spoke. 


164 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 165 

After the melting of the snow and before 
the falling of the next snow you will die.* She 
said the words, * Apres le fond de neige.’ And 
turning pale she laid down the cards. But 
Pere Formol insisted; he made her tell him 
what she saw. For a long time she could not 
be persuaded, then she told. Pere Formol only 
laughed. ‘ But my good woman/ he said, ‘ in 
France there is no snow.’ ” 

“ And what did she have to say to that? ” 

“ The Swiss? ” 

Madame Paul nodded, “ Mais, oui.” 

“ 4 One does not escape one’s destiny by com¬ 
ing to France.’ 

“ Last night when she came for the clothes 
she put down the basket and said, ‘ It is omi¬ 
nous. It is past the melting of the snow and 
the Pere Formol has fallen sick. His bed has 
been changed every day for the past three days. 
I am to be prompt with the washing. He 
laughed, but it is ominous.’ It appears the 
Captain came in to Pere Formol’s bedroom 
when the old Swiss was there, * Petit Suisse.’ 


166 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

She is a cheese, but she washes well and fifty 
centimes cheaper than that robber Picquette. 
She said the Captain was trying to persuade 
him to have a doctor, but old Pere Formol re¬ 
fused. Wouldn’t hear of it.” 

Madame Taneyre patted the puffs of her 
postiche. “ He is chic, the young Captain. 
Na-Na says he is well-born. He has the air 
of being chic quite naturally,” she said with a 
little feigned shyness. 

Madame Paul arranged a pile of one-franc 
pieces on the comptoir opposite to her. 

“ Enfin,” she said. “ It is a long while since 
he came to the neighborhood, that great dolt of 
a Formol. And precious little he has done for 
any of us. Never so much as a cognac at the 
‘ Restaurant,’ never a lobster from you. Only 
just yesterday one of my best clients said a 
neighborhood should patronize itself. My cur¬ 
rant cordial is famous. Clients come here for 
it expressly from the ‘ left bank.’ And in all 
these years that old dolt has never tasted my 
cordial. Well, if he is carried out of the quar- 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 1G7 

ter feet foremost, I for one will not have red 
eyes.” 

“ For my part,” said Madame Taneyre, “ I 
like to sell my lobsters, but I like a bit of fun. 
Youth now is always charming. When the 
young Captain buys I give him overweight. 
I cannot see why he bothers with the old dolt.” 

“ Perhaps he was in debt and the dolt put 
his name to a bill for him,” remarked Madame 
Paul. 

“ A young man in Paris needs money.” 

Madame Taneyre stole a glance at Madame 
Paul. 

“ Na-Na says the young Captain has plenty; 
it cannot be that. The old dolt has a mystery. 
All these years he has kept himself apart from 
the neighborhood. And then you remember 
the visits of the pretty woman. She has been 
several times and always wearing a veil, but 
with the same pretty figure to give herself 
away. No, the old dolt has a mystery.” 

“ I wonder if we will ever know,” said 
Madame Paul; “but, of course, when the 


168 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

coffin is put in the hearse, and he goes out feet 
foremost, we shall know.” 

Madame Taneyre folded her arms and 
gazed up at the sky. “ I wonder,” she said 
slowly, “ if any tears will fall on his grave? ” 

“ It is better,” replied Madame Paul, “ to 
taste the cordial of the neighborhood before 
the nose is carried away from the glass, while 
there is yet time to smell the bouquet. We 
know nothing about the instincts of the dead.” 

With this remark Madame Paul swept the 
pile of francs into the drawer. 


CHAPTER XXII 

Peter was startled by the sudden antago¬ 
nism which he developed for Pere Formol. 
Pere Formol, an old man sitting in the shad¬ 
ows, Pere Formol everybody’s father, in that 
age is a spectacle of perpetual parenthood for 
the young, part of the human procession that 
goes toiling along. As such he roused Peter’s 
pity; but Pere Formol, Peter’s father, thus 
his pity became obnoxious, a blur of resent¬ 
ment and tears. “ I have not changed these 
last days, I am just the same,” Peter said to 
himself, but pumping through his brain was 
the commonplace fact of heredity. A new 
enemy sprung into the pit, a thing undreamt 
of, a vague shame suggesting possibilities to 
which he might surrender. And there ensued 
within him a struggle of Peter versus Peter. 

Peter chivalrous, with sunshine in his heart and 
169 


170 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 
good-will toward men, and Peter sinister, un¬ 
submissive to this first direct blow of fate. 

The thing was a blotch. Wrong, all wrong, 
but to be faced nevertheless. He had even at 
one moment taken his hat to rush from number 
fifty-one, and find rooms elsewhere, but he had 
not left in time. The hot minute passed and 
found him still there, hat in hand, listening to 
the tramp of heredity. “ Captain of my fate,” 
he said to himself. “ Life, love, mine to carve 
as I choose,” but each moment with renewed 
force it broke over him that it only was a make- 
believe. A shoot of lava and something roared 
into life, that two hands could not keep back. 
Absurdities. Heart-rending absurdities. 

To the thought of his mother desperately 
he clung. “ She was not happy with him. She 
died. She may have been different.” Still 
the new thought did not destroy the old 
one. 

Something in him kept him away from Pere 
Formol those first days. Dislike of him and 
a fear, an almost craven fear, that Pere Formol 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 171 

must speak of Peter’s mother and with it de¬ 
stroy her as she had been to Peter. 

Then came a night when Na-Na found Pere 
Formol lying unconscious on the floor of his 
shop. Na-Na had missed him from his routine, 
his habits. And missing him up-stairs had 
gone down-stairs and found him. A face in 
the dark lying asleep. He lay still on the 
floor, his body inert, his eyes closed. An old 
man, with consciousness gone out of him. Re¬ 
lief for the moment from the aches his heart 
carried unknowingly. Was it death, or inter¬ 
vention? Warning maybe, that the time of 
oblivion, the return to nothingness would come. 
Na-Na who had raised his head, that he might 
breathe, dropped it and clattered along the 
passage and up the stone stairs for Peter. 
Was it death, or warning that the machine was 
wearing out, and the day fast coming when its 
wheels would stop? Death a rendezvous of the 
spirit to the dropping of tears. Na-Na clat¬ 
tered up the stone steps, pausing to put her 
hand to her side and catch her breath. Death 


172 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

the persistent, unbidden guest. Would Mon¬ 
sieur Pee-tah be in? At the third floor Na-Na 
paused and knocked at the door. 

Peter who had come in late was in his sit¬ 
ting-room, smoking a bedtime pipe. He was 
stretched on a chaise longue. When he heard 
the knock he lay for a moment without mov¬ 
ing, the book he had been reading in his hand, 
puffing at his pipe. The knock came again, 
this time more persistent. With a grunt Peter 
rolled to his feet and went striding toward the 
door. 

But when he opened the door he found 
Na-Na, her hand to her side, panting with 
having climbed the stairs too quickly. Na-Na 
with a white frightened face. 

In a harsh unnatural voice Na-Na said, 
“ Come quickly. Pere Formol is lying on the 
floor. His eyes are closed. I think he is 
dead.” 

For a moment Peter felt that he could not 
make himself go. There is never a time in 
one’s life one does not shrink from the un- 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 173 

pleasant. Peter did not for a moment think it 
death. He saw in imagination the white pa¬ 
per with the little gray powder. And he 
shrank from this because of the relation that 
Pere Formol bore to himself. It was an 
ignominious rottenness coming near to his own 
life. 

“ Monsieur Pee-tah,” Na-Na stopped 
speaking. She was looking tragically fright¬ 
ened. The bright spots had faded out of her 
cheeks. Her hand was pressed to her side to 
help her breathe. Peter looked at her. He 
put out his hand and patted her on the shoul¬ 
der. 

“ All right, Na-Na,” he said, “ I will come.” 

Na-Na stood aside to let him go before her 
down the stairs. As Peter went down the 
stairs all his antagonism was up in arms. All 
his resentment at what he expected to see was 
rife in him, awake in violent activity. He 
quickened his pace. He felt shame, but 
Na-Na had called him and he must go. 

When he reached the door, it was as Na-Na 


174 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

had left it, hastily pulled to, but not locked. 
Peter bit his lip and pushed it open. The room 
was dark save for the one side light that Na-Na 
had lighted in her hurry. Its white rays 
touched the sharp features of Gilly Collins. 
Shadows like unsympathetic, busy friends lay 
about him. They touched his black frock coat, 
his long artist fingers, his silvery white hair. 
Shadows, detached shadows touching him fa¬ 
miliarly and making him look strange. Shad¬ 
ows come to this life unconscious that was put¬ 
ting forth no effort to defend itself, come as 
the vultures come to the dead on the desert, 
having ascertained that the still hand will not 
chase them away. Peter shivered. 

Then he knelt to feel if breath had gone 
from the body. Peter knelt and listened, felt 
for the movement of the wave of life. After a 
minute he looked up at Na-Na. Dead hopes 
there might be in Gilly Collins’s heart, but he 
still lived. Aloud he said, “We must get him 
up to bed.” “ He is unconscious, because he has 
taken an overdose of the gray powder,” he 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 175 


thought. Ten days ago he would have voiced 
his suspicions to Na-Na, now he did not be¬ 
cause of the tie which had come alive between 
them. 

As Peter carried Gilly Collins to his room, 
his detachment Vanished. He took the steps 
easily; his burden ought not to be so light. 
The bones under the tightly buttoned frock 
coat must be but scantily covered with flesh. 
Peter shifted his burden that it might rest 
more easily upon his outstretched arms. 
Na-Na followed behind panting. Peter was 
grateful that in his ascent to the second floor 
he met no one. 

As he laid him on his bed it struck Peter 
suddenly that the bitterness which rumbled 
habitually under the frock coat was in this con¬ 
dition stilled, put to sleep by the gray powder. 
This was not the sleep of intoxication, it was 
a wasted oblivion, a seeking of those long 
fingers for a momentary anodyne. Peter took 
off his collar, loosened his clothes, tried to set¬ 
tle him comfortably and then, little as he knew 


176 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

about such matters, came to the conclusion that 
the spirit could not be allowed to rest where it 
was, that it must be agitated, called back from 
this blue heaven to the stormy winds of reality, 
lest life become suspended and the return im¬ 
possible. 

Gently watching for the rise and fall of his 
breath Peter moved his arms up and down, 
fought with him for his return to the mighty 
things of life. Back from the distant point to 
the adventure by the way. Not a whisper, not 
a word, only the constant moving of his arms 
to circumvent that hypnotic sleep. The soul 
which thought it had found a passage to es¬ 
cape, like a sad prisoner must be brought back 
reluctant to the unfinished adventure. 

“ Go for a doctor,” said Peter to Na-Na. 
“ I can’t bring him around.” 

As Na-Na went out of the room, a flood of 
thoughts, doubts, temptations, flowed through 
Peter. Why not wait until the doctor came? 
It would be haphazard, not deliberate. Why 
try to bring old Formol back? Why not let 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 177 


him stay out in those spaces where he had 
gone? Seen in this fashion it was a legitimate 
inaction. Just in ceasing his ministrations to 
let this soul go free. For a moment only Peter 
thought this and then an old habit reasserted 
itself. A habit stranger than he knew in such 
a context. It was, “ My mother’s son doesn’t 
do those things.” 

He must bring old Formol quickly back 
from the emerald grass of that dark green 
sward, bring him back to await the great pur¬ 
pose of the omnipotent gardener, whose alone 
is the right to appoint the time and the way 
out. From far, far away the rooted life must 
return to its root. It must return to its world. 
The spirit away Peter felt no antagonism. 
The thin worn body with its stooped shoulders 
called forth his pity. Energetically Peter 
worked the arms to bring back respiration. 
Here where Pere Formol lay life was tearing 
at him to come back. With all his strength, 
with all his will Peter tried, until at last he 
felt rather than heard a short sobbing sigh. 


178 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

But when the glassy eyes opened and looked 
at him all Peter’s antagonism returned; the 
moment of pity which had absorbed him was 
gone. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


Na-Na softly opened the door of Peter’s 
room. How hot it was! Surely it must be 
going to thunder; the air was so close and op¬ 
pressive. 

Peter moved restlessly on his bed, his hand 
behind his head for a pillow. And through 
his sleep his wounds ached with a curious per¬ 
sistence. 

He started up. No, he had not been asleep; 
he had been dreaming with open eyes. There 
was Na-Na and there was nine striking from 
the clock tower in the distance. He must get 
to work. 

“ If you please, sir,” said Na-Na, “ he is 
awake.” 

Peter stirred fiercely. 

“ What do you want here—following me 

about with that man’s doings? ” 

179 


180 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

Na-Na looked around the room and drew 
one hand across her forehead as if bewildered. 

“You have been sitting up with him for two 
nights. I thought you would like to know.” 

Peter shot a quizzical glance at her. 

“ He is breathing quite properly. There is 
a little exhaustion, but his mind is clear.” 

At that moment Peter realized, as he cer¬ 
tainly never realized before, how strong the 
wish had been that Pere Formol would die. 
He was glad of his day’s work that would oc¬ 
cupy him until the evening. 

“ Tell him I have a busy day before me and 
will come to see him this evening,” he said 
stiffly. 

“ You are right,” said Na-Na coax- 
ingly. “ Forget that old man and enjoy your¬ 
self.” 

But all morning and afternoon Peter 
thought of the interview before him. Would 
he hear anything of his antecedents? He 
dreaded to ask. Would there be a rupture be¬ 
tween them? One thought had occurred to 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 181 

him. Where did his allowance come from? 
Certainly not from Pere Formol. 

That evening he knocked at Pere Formol’s 
door. As he entered he saw that with an air 
of weariness and yellowness and greater so¬ 
lemnity than usual, Pere Formol lay upon his 
bed. “ How are you? ” asked Peter, coming 
forward. 

“ Not well, not well. But if you come as a 
dutiful son, it makes me think you must resign 
and take on my interests in art.” 

“ Good God,” uttered Peter in a low voice. 
It was the expression of his revolt. 

A little book lay on the bed; old Formol took 
it up. “ I have been reading Robert Brown¬ 
ing.” 

“ What would one wish for more? ” 

“ I who have so much,” Pere Formol waved 
his hand, pointing to the meagre furnishings 
of his room. 

“ ‘ Perhaps/ I quote the poet, 4 in heaven, 
new chances. One more chance. The four 
great walls of the New Jerusalem/ Now I 


182 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 


have eaten nothing. My soul is ether. I weep. 
I wait. I am like one after death. If you were 
to go out, Peter, and stand in the centre of 
Paris, in the market-place of the world, and 
you were to call unto you the populace, the 
mob, the community of nations and had you 
time to ask them individually what they would 
have, each man, his sole desire. From each 
man I’ll wager you would get Robert Brown¬ 
ing’s words. I hear them, the publicans, the 
sinners, the tatterdemalions. ‘ What would 
one wish for more? Perhaps in heaven new 
chances. One more chance.’ The libertines, 
the haunters of the gaming houses, the unsuc¬ 
cessful lovers, the defeated statesmen, the 
beaten artists —* One more chance.’ ” A fit of 
coughing took him. He had stopped mechan¬ 
ically, like an old clock. 

“ Suppose,” said Peter, “ you rest a little 
while.” 

“ I dare say ”—a distracted wheeze inter¬ 
rupted—“ I am going to rest for a long time; 
that is why I have been thinking you must ap- 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 183 
prentice yourself to me at once, so that I may 
teach you my secrets. The storm has come. 
For the moment it is halted by the reeds. You 
must learn quickly; it will come again.” Pere 
Formol was tired. He looked old. 

Peter’s eyes widened, stared at his host and 
hardened. 

“ I’ve thought of this,” he said at length, 
“ and I cavil.” He hesitated. “ In view of 
what you told me I will do anything else for 
you I can, but I can’t feel it would help you 
for me to give up my career.” 

Pere Formol cast a peculiar glance at him 
full of shrewdness. 

“ I cannot give up my career,” said Peter 
in a dull low voice. 

“ I hope,” said Pere Formol, “ that you are 
not ashamed to have me for a father? ” 

His voice sounded hurt and now an expres¬ 
sion of acute vexation had come into his face. 

“ I am not canaille,” Pere Formol said. 

He stopped. He seemed to feel the useless¬ 
ness of his argument. 


184 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

“ I want you to help me with my dis¬ 
coveries.” Again the shrewd glance came 
into his face. “ New chances, one more 
chance-” 

“ But I know nothing about it.” 

“ You might try.” 

Again Peter was silent, 

“ I might try, but it wouldn’t be any use.” 

Peter felt Pere Formol watching him. 

“ I’ll do what I can.” 

“ You’ll send in your resignation? ” 

His voice sounded so earnest, so sincere, 
after all he must be counselling what he 
thought good. 

Gradually a thrill ran through Peter. He 
had thought of Lady Gilchrist. 

“ I can’t resign my career,” he said, “ but I 
will do what I can otherwise.” 

A look of anger came into Pere For- 
mol’s eyes and a slow red crept into his 
cheeks. 

“ Sorry you feel like that. What’s to be 
done? I’ll tell Lady Gilchrist, for whom you 



THAT WHICH IS PASSED 185 


have such an apparent admiration, that you are 
an undutiful son.” 

In spite of himself, Peter flushed. 

“ Don’t do that,” he said quickly. 

Pere Formol turned his head and faced him. 

“Not tell her you are my son.” 

“ No,” said Peter, “ I’d rather not.” 

Pere Formol suddenly bared his teeth. 

“ You are ashamed of me? ” he asked. 

Peter did not answer. 

“ Then,” he said, “ I shall tell Lady Gil¬ 
christ you are my son, unless you come and 
work with me.” 

Peter laughed cynically. “ Perhaps she 
wouldn’t be interested.” 

Pere Formol made a hasty rejoinder to this. 

“Ah! then I shall go to her husband and 
tell him a little scandal that I have known 
about Mary Gilchrist these twenty-five years. 
Something I’ll wager she never told him and 
that will upset her apple-cart a bit. So you 
don’t think Mary Gilchrist is interested in me, 
or my son? I’ll take a walk by the Ritz and 


186 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 
find out if Sir Jocelyn is interested in what I 
have to say.” 

“ I say you mustn’t do that,” said Peter, 
with a swift glance. His voice was unusually 
gentle. 

“ And why not, pray? ” 

Peter’s mouth twitched. “ It might make 
her unhappy, give her pain.” 

Before Pere Formol could reply, Peter 
added: 

“ I won’t let you do anything that you would 
regret as much as that. You would be sorry 
afterward. It’s—it’s unchivalrous.” 

P&re Formol gave a grating, bitter laugh. 

In every interview he had so far had with 
him, Peter had been struck by the dual per¬ 
sonality in Pere Formol. Thunder and bit¬ 
terness and then a sunbeam. A flash in the 
rancour, did Peter know it, of Gilly Collins the 
man he might have been. Sometimes as one 
stands looking at the sunlit grass a shadow 
slaps upon it; the result of a cloud coming be¬ 
tween it and the sun. So in Pere Formol’s 


THAT WHICH IS PxVSSED 187 


sunny moments his bitterness, his revenge, his 
grudge against the world, his hatred of hearing 
that anyone found himself bestowed with the 
pleasures he had been made to forego, these 
blotted out his better nature and the shadow 
slapped on the grass. Certain terrible truths 
about life abode in him like a great cloud that 
no sun could disperse. 

Peter having refused to be frightened by 
feverish threats w r ent away from him that night 
with mixed thoughts. It bothered Peter that 
a man could quote Andrea del Sarto and yet 
bear such ill will. 

“ Perhaps in heaven new chances. One 
more chance.” A hand groping after better 
things, weakly without will perhaps, but grop¬ 
ing. 

There are certain things Peter thought that 
every man has to find out for himself. And 
one—the mixture of good and evil in each in¬ 
dividual. Nothing all good, or all bad. A 
Gilly Collins and a Pere Formol. 

Peter walked slowly up to his room—think- 


188 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

ing. “ Here was this man, nothing to him but 
the merest stranger two weeks ago, and now 
by reason of his parenthood putting forth 
claims. My father and yet we haven’t the same 
thoughts.” And the thought of having the 
same thoughts led Peter to Lady Gilchrist. 
So sophisticated, so charming, with a fragrance 
of the spirit which at the time he hardly no¬ 
ticed, but which came to him after he had left 
her. They had thoughts in common. 

She had called him “ a young knight,” divin¬ 
ing the voice of chivalry in him that could not 
express itself. It w r as always thus ideas came 
to Peter. A thought was a living thing to him, 
then for long periods it seemed to go away, and 
then after a period of time it returned and the 
consciousness of it got into his brain again. 

Peter who so far as he knew had no blood 
in him that was better than Pere Formol’s, 
launched after the idea of championage. “ A 
young knight.” “ By Jove,” he thought, “ a 
knight wins his own place in the tournament.” 

Peter was bewildered at Pere Formol’s in- 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 180 


sisting upon his giving up his career, outraged 
at his threat to tell on Lady Gilchrist; kitchen- 
wise, of course, old Formol knew nothing that 
could affect her life one way or the other, but 
Peter felt she would shrink from a scene, a 
kitchen scene. Besides he remembered her be¬ 
havior that first day he had seen her lunching 
at the Ritz. She had certainly not bowed to 
him until her husband had gone away. And 
she had not wanted Peter to stay, had obvi¬ 
ously wanted him to be gone indeed, before her 
husband returned. Perhaps Sir Jocelyn was 
a bit of a martinet. “ She shan’t be bothered,” 
said Peter. “ It is over my dead body Pere 
Formol will bother her. I won’t resign either. 
I will find a way to keep him quiet.” 

Peter did not know what the fortune teller 
had foretold and that life like a bird flying 
goes swift upon its wing. 


CHAPTER XXIV 

The next day Bobby, Peter’s friend at 
the Embassy, chaffed him on his almost des¬ 
perate light-heartedness. 

“ It is so French,” said Bobby; “ you are a 
chameleon. You are determined to rise above 
what Bruant calls ‘ the dreary ways of the 
outer Boulevards.’ ” 

“ Stop rotting, Bobby,” said Peter. Bobby 
stopped it. For he had seen a look of despair 
come into Peter’s usually sunny face. 

“ Old chap, what is it? You must tell me.” 

The look of despair gave place to a stubborn 
look which Bobby knew well. Peter used it 
when he set his machine against some cross 
current in the upper air. 

“ It’s only boredom,” Peter said. “ Bore¬ 
dom of being in town all through the summer.” 

Bobby was a kind little Scotchman with a 

great liking for Peter. 

190 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 191 
“ I am having a little party to-night,” he 
said; “ wish you’d come. Lady Boscawen and 
her daughter who has been studying music in 
Paris. She is rather a ripper. Got a little 
Paris push, mixed with her London languor. 
The effect is ripping. We are dining at Ciro’s 
and going on to the opera.” 

Peter was disturbed. He felt like a dog 
whose carefully hidden bone had suddenly been 
uncovered by fate. He would have liked to 
shut himself up until he had discovered an¬ 
other bone, hut when he looked up and saw 
Bobby regarding him with such good-humored 
affection, his natural responsiveness made him 
say: “All right, Bobby, I’ll come.” 

When Peter spied Bobby at Ciro’s that 
night, he had with him two women. A me¬ 
dium-sized woman with a vivacious and per¬ 
fectly assured manner, and a beautiful, slim 
girl with brown wavy hair and intelligent soft 
brown eyes. Peter knew, of course, that she 
must be Lady Boscawen’s daughter, but the 
face—what struck him at once was that she was 


192 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 
either surprisingly like someone he knew, or 
else he had met her before. When Bobby in¬ 
troduced him and she raised her eyes and held 
out her hand, Peter knew—she was very like 
Lady Gilchrist. 

Now ever since Peter had first seen Lady 
Gilchrist at Galignini’s bookshop, something 
had been awake in him that had never been 
awake before. A little fire that had long been 
laid was suddenly lighted. A flaccid muscle 
began to move. Peter did not analyze his 
feeling, he put it down to his love of beauty, 
but it was there awake in him. Daphne Bos- 
cawen was therefore like a flashlight of a pic¬ 
ture that for a little while he had carried about 
in his pocket. Her greeting to Peter was shy. 
He noticed at once that her manner was nat¬ 
ural, but reserved, and he supposed the “ Paris 
push ” Bobby had spoken of was evinced in her 
clothes, which were extremely becoming and 
more “ chic ” than those usually worn by an 
English girl brought up in England and 
dressed in London. Instantly she interested 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 193 

him by her shyness and beauty and because she 
was like the woman whom he admired most in 
the world. 

Daphne Boscawen had a voice that was low 
and sensitive. It was not as strong as Lady 
Gilchrist’s, but it had a timbre of its own just 
as hers had. She was natural and unself-con- 
scious and not at all preoccupied with the ef¬ 
fect her beauty was having on others. At din¬ 
ner, although he observed her, the conversation 
was mostly general and when Daphne and 
Bobby were talking Peter found himself be¬ 
ing questioned by Lady Boscawen. How long 
had he been in Paris? What was his job? 
Was he English? Who were his people? 
Peter shut up at that. It was always a poser 
for him. 

“ I am an isolated instance,” he said as he 
had always replied to that question. And then 
suddenly remembering Pere Formol, he 
blushed. He could not truthfully answer like 
that any more. Lady Boscawen saw the flush 
and wondered. 


194 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 


At the Opera Peter sat between Lady Bos- 
cawen and her daughter. In between the Bal¬ 
lets, Peter talked to Daphne. He asked her 
if she understood it, and her answer surprised 
him. 

“ No,” she said. “ Not really, but why 
should I? The best things in life one doesn’t 
understand.” 

“ What, for instance? ” 

“ Beauty and—love,” added Daphne with a 
sudden shy look. 

That little answer found a home in Peter’s 
heart. 

“ Right you are,” he said rather abruptly, 
because he was stirred by it. “ You love 
beauty? ” he asked. 

Daphne nodded. 

“We ought to be pals then,” said Peter. 
“ I love beauty too. I love the sea, the fields 
and the sky. I think it was the thought of 
being up in the clouds that took me into the 
flying corps.” Peter suddenly remembered he 
had made the same remark to Lady Gilchrist. 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 195 

“ By the way,” he said suddenly, “ you re¬ 
mind me tremendously of someone I met.” 

Daphne raised her eyebrows and listened. 
Her face was turned toward him and Peter 
noticed a little pulse beating in her throat. An 
eagerness waiting for his words. She was an 
unusual creature, enthusiastic and shy. 

“ Someone I met for the first time quite 
lately,” continued Peter, “ here in Paris. An 
Englishwoman, Lady Gilchrist. Do you know 
her? ” 

A contraction of the eyes, a quickening of 
the beating pulse, a confused gleam of the 
stars and Daphne said, “ I don’t. Mother 
does. She went to tea with her the other day. 
She is my father’s cousin.” 

Something intimate was established between 
them. Peter liked her because she was like 
someone he admired. He had caught the 
shadow dream in her eyes as the lids con¬ 
tracted; the flying vision of a compelling 
thought. Aloud he said, “ Funny I should see 
the likeness immediately, wasn’t it? ” The 


196 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 


lights twinkled and went down. Again the 
curtain was going up. 

“ Bobby said you were rather a dear,” said 
Daphne through the darkness. 

After the Opera again small details like a 
dividing current bore them apart. 

Peter’s eyes travelled through the obvious 
and brought back one of life’s facts. 

“ There is something very nice about a nice 
woman, Bobby,” he said irrelevantly, as they 
were strolling home. 

Bobby gave him a quick look. “ You had 
better take your holiday early this year,” he 
said. 


CHAPTER XXV 


The next morning Peter woke in a happier 
frame of mind. The more he thought over 
Pere FormoFs suggestions and threats, the 
more he decided to let the matter take its 
course. Bobby’s party had cheered him up and 
he felt Pere FormoFs claims on him were a 
little absurd. 

He went to the office as usual, had a rather 
hurried lunch with Bobby and when he re¬ 
turned to his intense astonishment a note was 
put into his hand addressed in the writing of 
Pere Formol. Wondering what it could be 
about, he opened it hurriedly. It was marked 
“ Personal ” and had neither beginning nor 
end. It read as follows: 

“ 1: 30. As you have not considered my 
wishes, I am on my way to tell the husband of 
a. certain lady a little joke. I shall stay there 
until I see him.” 


197 


198 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

Peter was so taken back that he stood for a 
minute or two holding the note in his hand. 
Then he thought, he had not been long at 
luncheon; this must have just come; he might 
be able to waylay Pere Formol and reason 
with him. 

Crushing the note in his pocket, he turned 
and reaching the street walked hurriedly in the 
direction of the Ritz. As he walked he 
searched with his eyes on both sides of the 
street for the stooping figure of Pere Formol, 
but he had already gained the Ritz with¬ 
out catching sight of him. Once inside he 
looked quickly about him and sized up the 
situation. To be sure, he went over to the 
desk. 

“ Can you tell me,” he asked, “ if anyone is 
calling on Lady Gilchrist? ” 

The office clerk looking slightly surprised, 
Peter added, “ I had an appointment with a 
tall gentleman with white hair. I have missed 
him.” 

Secretly reassured, the clerk said, “ A gen- 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 199 


tleman answering that description has just 
asked the number of her sitting-room; he must 
have gone up. He said she was expecting 
him.” 

Peter turned and crossed to the lift, but at 
that moment he saw coming in by the Place 
Vendome door, Sir Jocelyn Gilchrist. 

Experience brings some gifts to nearly 
everyone. In the flying corps during the war, 
Peter had learned to make up his mind quickly, 
act on initiative and trust to luck to bring him 
through. At once he felt Sir Jocelyn must 
not find Pere Formol in Lady Gilchrist’s sit¬ 
ting-room. Strangely enough it never oc¬ 
curred to him Lady Gilchrist might need as¬ 
sistance. Peter had seen her treat Pere For¬ 
mol with disdain; she could manage him; but if 
Pere Formol really had some tale to tell, real 
or invented, Sir Jocelyn must not hear it. 
Peter remembered how Lady Gilchrist had got 
her husband out of the way that day before 
at the Ritz before she beckoned to him. All 
these things flashed through Peter’s mind. 


200 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 
Then he strode over to Sir Jocelyn and spoke 
to him. 

“ Sir Jocelyn Gilchrist/’ said Peter. “ You 
don’t remember me, sir, but I played bridge 
with you a couple of times at the Club in Lon¬ 
don. Saw you the other day and thought I 
would like to speak.” 

Sir Jocelyn looked at Peter in amazement, 
but Peter missed the sudden gleam in his eye. 
Sir Jocelyn wondered and suspected a pur¬ 
pose, but Peter the desperate went on, his 
anxiety drowning the uneasiness he felt at 
what he was doing. “ Keep him,” his caution 
said, “ keep him at all costs.” As Peter talked 
a keen, searching look came into Sir Jocelyn’s 
eyes, but Peter’s young face looked so anxious, 
so desperate that Sir Jocelyn smiled vaguely 
and met his gaze as he brought his mind back 
to what Peter was rambling about. There 
was a horse it seemed, a wonderful, long- 
legged, French horse, running in a race that 
very afternoon. Peter had just been hearing 
about it at lunch. Everyone knew, of course, 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 201 


Sir Jocelyn was a cracker jack at knowing a 
horse. When Peter saw him come in at the 
door, he had the thought, he hoped Sir Jocelyn 
would forgive him, but he had the thought, per¬ 
haps he would come with him to see the race. 
Peter paused. The chance was so slim. He 
had said all he could think of at the moment, 
in spite of the necessity for action. 

Sir Jocelyn again gazed at Peter a moment 
before he broke the curious spell that was be¬ 
tween them. He knew he was being detained; 
did he wonder why? His reply startled Peter. 

“ I will come with you,” he said slowly, “ but 
I must first get my overcoat.” 

“ But-” Peter stared horrified. This 

would upset everything. His casual manner, 
which was very polite, very unobtrusive, was 
superseded by a keen insistence which con¬ 
veyed itself to Sir Jocelyn. 

“ You can’t,” said Peter; “ you will miss the 
race. Besides it is summer; you won’t need an 
overcoat. And further—the race is one of the 
first; we have only just time.” 



202 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

“He is lying,” thought Sir Jocelyn. “I 
wonder why. There is something at the back 
of this.” In Sir Jocelyn’s acceptance there 
was a touch of overbearing patronage. Peter 
felt it, but what was he to do? The uncer¬ 
tainty of whether or no Pere Formol had really 
something to tell made this imperative. 

“ If we go out of the other door,” said Peter, 
“ the garage where I keep my car is quite near. 
It is almost quicker to walk than to take a 
taxi.” 

Sir Jocelyn noticed that as the distance in¬ 
creased between them and the Ritz, Peter’s 
look of intense anxiety lessened. There came 
something almost of cordiality in his eyes, and 
he made an effort to entertain his guest. 

All that he had fancied about this being in 
some measure a plant began to fade from his 
mind. As Peter headed his car toward the 
Champs Elysees on the way to the Bois, he 
gave him a look that was almost boyish and 
then settled down to drive the car and enter¬ 
tain his guest. In all Sir Jocelyn’s fifty years 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 203 

perhaps no young man had ever set out with 
such fervor to entertain him, keep him amused. 
Peter felt that if he could only keep Sir Joce¬ 
lyn out of the way, Lady Gilchrist would find 
some means to get rid of Pere Formol and so 
any unpleasantness for her would be avoided. 
Once face to face with Pere Formol Peter 
meant to deal with him. He did not know 
how, but when he thought of it his lips tight¬ 
ened one upon the other. It gave a slight il¬ 
lumination to the present dark moment, the 
thought of how he would deal with Pere For¬ 
mol. 

Peter pointed out some of the beauties of 
the road. Sir Jocelyn listened, or retaliated, 
but his face seemed to grow gentler as the 
time passed, although a far-away shrewdness 
settled in his expression as if a new idea had 
taken root in his mind. 

The afternoon, with an utter disregard that 
there was any reason for hurry, dragged out 
its sweetness in a very leisurely manner. 

After the race which they had expressly 


204 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

come to see, Sir Jocelyn was for going home, 
but Peter begged him to stay for a couple of 
races more and Sir Jocelyn acquiesced. 

“France has changed,” said Sir Jocelyn, 
“ it is greatly changed.” 

“ It is bankrupt,” answered Peter. “ Only 
to-day I heard an American say the franc 
ought to be thirty to the dollar, and yet they 
say the peasants have five million in gold hid¬ 
den in the bas de laine.” 

“ France is past,” said Sir Jocelyn. “ It is 
a land of shadows. Beautiful gardens, beau¬ 
tiful houses, buildings, monuments built to the 
past. What of the rehabilitation of the fu¬ 
ture? There are still years ahead of the world, 
new generations coming on. What of them? 
How will France set her stage for them? ” 

“ I love France,” said Peter. 

“ So did I, when I was your age. I do yet, 
but not as I love England. Life will come out 
of the masses in England. She is in throes, 
but she isn’t over. The very way she is set¬ 
tling down to pay her war debt to America 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 205 

shows that. She may have to sell her pictures, 
let some of her art treasures go, but she will 
meet her obligations and any nation, or indi¬ 
vidual, who settles down to meet its obliga¬ 
tions isn’t finished by a long shot. There is 
youth in that. There is youth and vitality in 
that.” 

“ Right you are,” asserted Peter. It was 
his highest form of approval. 

Thus between the races they, two English¬ 
men in France, conversed and by an unprecon¬ 
ceived possibility, each of them suddenly 
awoke to the fact that they were not only en¬ 
joying themselves, but liking each other. 

“ Funny,” thought Sir Jocelyn to himself, 
“ why he carried me off like this. I thought 
it was a plant, some ulterior motive, but the 
more I talk to him, the more I feel I must be 
mistaken.” Sir Jocelyn saw in Peter the op¬ 
timistic youthful confidence that the middle- 
aged learn to pity in the young. 

Turning to Peter, he asked, “ Are you fond 
of horses? ” 


206 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 


Peter nodded. “ Horses and dogs too. I 
had a hunter, a peach of a horse. I sold her 
when I left England.” 

“ I should like to show you my stable,” said 
Sir Jocelyn. “ Shall you be coming back to 
England? ” 

A flush spread over Peter’s cheek. 

“ My future is a little uncertain,” he replied. 
“ I am not quite sure of my plans.” 

And seeing that the subject seemed to dis¬ 
turb him Sir Jocelyn quickly spoke of some¬ 
thing else. 

Fate sat by the heart of things drawing her 
outline, unwinding her skein. And the strange 
thing about that day was that Peter and Sir 
Jocelyn had developed a real liking for each 
other. 


CHAPTER XXVI 


When Peter left Sir Jocelyn after his 
afternoon at the races and when he had put 
his car in its garage, he walked home. And 
as he walked three words of an old romance 
kept ringing in his head. They were three 
attributes describing the successes of a knight 
who had fought in many a fight, as seemingly 
dangerous as it was improbable of victory. In 
summing up the knight’s victories the story 
teller had added “ these were the triumphs of 
Narcostes, but by none were they begrudged 
to him for he was brave and comely and 
chivalrous.” 

Peter was not looking forward to the inter¬ 
view before him, and from the force of habit 
he thought of an idea with which he was wont 
to stimulate himself, and the old story of a 
knight upon some right and gallant quest had 

always held for him a great enchantment. 

207 


208 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 


The details of the Knight Narcostes were long 
since blurred, but Peter still remembered the 
reason of his success to be the fact that he was 
“ brave and comely and chivalrous.” 

Again as Peter walked toward his interview 
the two men in Pere Formol were obvious to 
him. The man he might have been and the 
man who was no more. The man who said 
“ Perhaps in heaven new chances,” and the 
man who could use the filthy weapon of black¬ 
mail to a woman, dig up some shadowy fact, 
some memory of the years to make her suffer. 
“ Good and evil,” thought Peter, “ good and 
evil mixed up in all of us. Who dare judge 
another? ” 

When Peter reached P&re Formol’s shop, he 
found the door already locked. Its owner must 
have closed on time and gone up-stairs. Per¬ 
haps indeed the shop had not been open that 
afternoon at all. 

Up-stairs Peter found Pere Formol. 

As was his habit after any undue excite¬ 
ment, the withered body of this man was more 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 209 


parchment-like, more tremblingly weak, more 
motionless in the silence, in which he sat alone, 
as though from its shadow strength would 
creep to him across the floor. The sound of 
Peter knocking on the door disturbed the old 
man’s resting and his little eyes were blinking 
as Peter opened it and came in. Effort re¬ 
turned to him slowly, but as always he made 
the attempt to be mentally vital. 

“ A new thought for my note-book, Peter,” 
he said. “ Genius is something between a man 
and his creator, but talent is a modem adapta¬ 
tion of the opinions of the crowd. Nothing 
new under the stars, Peter, nothing new. 
Only each generation wants the old ideas 
served up expressly for itself. An old dish 
with a new serving. Yoila tout.” 

“ I haven’t come to speak about that,” said 
Peter. 

Pere Formol offered no answer. 

“ I have come on account of the note you 
left me at the office and its threat.” 

The old man turned restlessly in his chair, 


210 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

as if his infirmities were more than imaginary 
and hampered him. Life had been in him in 
the morning. Life was gone out of him now, 
but that was a phase of age. Every now and 
then, life took a little holiday, it left his body. 
It would return, of course, but it was unfair to 
ring up the curtain for a scene at the moment 
when the life was out of him. 

Peter was opening a battle before him. He 
should send back a vitriolic spray of words. 
Where were they? They would not come. 
Yes, he remembered, this was the second scene 
staged for that day. 

Peter heard him sigh, but still he said noth¬ 
ing. Peter did not wait for an answer, but 
began to relate slowly the thoughts that 
had formed in his mind during his walk 
home. 

Pere Formol listened, and while he listened 
he sat very still. 

“ You have told me,” said Peter slowly, 
“ that you are my father. The fact of this dis¬ 
closure was such a shock to me that although 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 211 


I intended to ask you about it—why I never 
knew it before? Why, since you are alive, I 
was led to believe you had died? I have in¬ 
tended to ask you these questions, but have not 
been able to bring myself to do it. As a fa¬ 
ther, you have done nothing for me. As a son 
you make the demand that I give up my career 
and apprentice myself to you. I refuse, and 
rightly. The idea is absurd. You threaten 
that unless I agree to your wishes you have 
some trumped-up bit of information that you 
will produce to annoy a lady that you are cun¬ 
ning enough to see I admire. I suppose you 
have spied on me and know that she was good 
enough to have tea with me.” 

Pere Formol looked up suddenly and his 
eyes contracted. 

Peter guessed that he had not known this 
and was sorry he had mentioned it. 

“ He was brave,” thought Peter. He went 
on. “ For myself, I am not afraid of anything. 
If you choose to announce to the world that 
you are my father, then do it. I have found 


212 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

good friends in life; some way I shall live it 
down.” 

The old man in the chair winced, then he 
raised his bent shoulders and glowered majes¬ 
tically. 

And “ chivalrous ” thought Peter. He con¬ 
tinued, “ I shall not allow you to annoy Lady 
Gilchrist in any way. I don’t believe you 
know anything, but even to be confronted with 
some fabrication would be unpleasant for her. 
I shan’t allow it. Besides, she, a charming 
woman, took the trouble to come and see you, 
an old man out of her world, who has no 
earthly claim on her, except in the kindness of 
her heart. Why do you repay kindness with 
cruelty? It is this malicious streak in you I 
cannot understand.” 

Pere Formol’s head that had rested fallen 
forward slightly, raised itself. Life was com¬ 
ing back to him, he could feel it in his eyes 
now. They were angry. Presently it would 
be tingling all through him, at last it would 
centre in his solar plexis. He smiled to him- 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 213 

self. Then he would retaliate in full. He 
closed his eyes for a moment as though to 
martial his anger. 

“ How do you know,” he asked sharply, 
“that I have no claim on Lady Gilchrist?” 
His words were like projectiles. It was the 
beginning of battle. 

“ What claim could you have, except upon 
her kindness? A man w r ho would use black¬ 
mail.” The scorn of the answer stung words 
into the air that might not otherwise have come. 

“ Fool. I have a claim. I was Lady Gil¬ 
christ’s lover. I have a letter I can show Sir 
Jocelyn that will prove it.” The words 
clashed in the air and made a raucous sound. 

Peter’s eyes saw nothing. 

“ I have a claim. Why am I malicious? All 
these years, never once has luck played for me. 
I have given it a hostage. I have said, ‘ if my 
mind chances on some new iconoclastic discov¬ 
ery, I will give up all thoughts of revenge.’ 
Again I said, * if that painting in the Salon ’— 
for I have been in the Salon—‘ if that painting 


214 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

wins the first prize of the year, I will forget my 
bitter thoughts, turn sweet, give up revenge.’ 
But all my life I’ve lived against the wind. 
Never a stroke of luck, never a gift out of high 
heaven. And now—before I leave the quarter, 
it amuses me to take a toll from you. You 
seem to be the knight in shining armour.” Pere 
Formol gave an ugly laugh. At last Peter 
looked at him. 

“ You must give me that letter,” he said in 
a curiously inexpressive way. 

Again Pere Formol sent a jnercing glance to 
Peter. A vein in Pere Formol’s forehead had 
swollen; he touched it with his finger and as if 
realizing he must save his strength spoke more 
slowly. 

“ I will make a bargain with you, Peter—if 
you will give up the Embassy and apprentice 
yourself to me, learn what I have to teach you, 
if you will do this—I will leave Lady Gil¬ 
christ in peace.” 

“ Why must I give up my career? ” 

“ I want help here. I have wanted you for 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 215 


some time. I want you so much, I will even 
force you to come.” 

“ And if—I do this—you will leave Lady 
Gilchrist alone? ” Peter said sternly. “ You 
will write her a note, telling her she has noth¬ 
ing to fear from you any more? ” 

“ Yes, yes.” 

“ You will get an answer from Lady Gil¬ 
christ saying she has received all her letters 
from you. Then I will resign from the Em¬ 
bassy.” 

Pere Formol seemed to be turning some¬ 
thing over in his mind. At last he said: 

“ How do I know you won’t trick me? You 
must resign first, as a surety. I shall not ex¬ 
pect you to work with me until I have fulfilled 
my part of the bargain.” 

“ You damned scoundrel,” said Peter. 
“ Have it your way.” 

Pere Formol half shut his eyes. There was 
a look under his skin as if he had suddenly gone 
white from a blow. 

“ Gave up the years to be,” said Peter to 


216 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

himself. Aloud he said, “ Mind you play fair. 
No false steps to her, or the bargain is off. 
You have to reckon with someone young and 
desperate. You must not misunderstand what 
I do. I am not a coward. It is that I will not 
allow Lady Gilchrist to be annoyed by you, 
who say you are my father.” 

In spite of Peter’s last remark the anger was 
fading out of Pere Formol’s eyes. Life was 
going out of him again. Still his power re¬ 
mained; he had done what he had intended, he 
had carried his point. 

“ I am going to make you explain,” said 
Peter, “ but not now. Now for the moment I 
have had all the unpleasantness I can stand.” 

“ Explain what? ” 

“ Why after all these years you suddenly 
claim me as your son. Who my mother was. 
Poor soul, I dread to hear. That must wait.” 

Pere Formol’s head had fallen forward be¬ 
tween his shoulders again. “ The pantomime 
passes into a panorama,” he said. “ The end 
of life is an empty house. They carry out all 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 217 


the furniture. Dead hopes. Dead loves. 
Dead ambitions. Dead friends. Each man 
sits at last alone.” So his words wandered re¬ 
luctantly. 

And Peter, young, aching with the raw 
wounds of life, said to himself, “ I wanted to 
do something for her. I have done it, but she 
will never know.” 


CHAPTER XXVII 

The Sunday after the eventful week 
wherein Peter had been to the Opera with 
Bobby and the races with Sir Jocelyn Gilchrist 
was a wonderful Paris day. Its wonder 
prompted Bobby to propose that he take Peter 
to call upon the Boscawens. Bobby the 
cicerone wished to be a link for fleeting fancy; 
having since his theatre party met Daphne in 
the street, a Daphne who squeezed his hand 
and said, “ O! Bobby, he is a dear.” At this 
Bobby remembered Peter’s remark on the way 
home. “ There is something very nice about 
a nice woman.” To him all this meant some¬ 
thing happy and easy, a facile means of 
smoothing the lines out of Peter’s brow. They 
must see each other by all means, he would take 
Peter to call. In the affairs of the heart if he 

had a maxim it was “propinquity.” It was 
218 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 219 


his belief that Peter was very unknowing 
about women, therefore he reasoned it, that if 
the clouds upon his brow meant a coming storm 
of sex, if they meant that Peter was, or was 
about to be “ touched in the wind,” the pre¬ 
cautionary measure, the action of a wise friend 
was to lead him to the right quarter. He could 
think of no happier spot than Daphne’s door. 
Had he been a foot higher with a straighter 
nose, a better profile. Had he been buoyed 
up with better looks, he would have continued 
to try his luck. As it was he had tried timidly 
and Daphne had shaken her head. “ N6 
chance? ” asked Bobby. “No chance,” was 
the reply. “ Never, never? ” asked Bobby. 
“ Never, never,” repeated the questioned one. 
“ Righto! ” said Bobby and it may be said for 
his sporting instincts that if he were not pre¬ 
pared to help Peter mightily, he at least could 
bear to see him win. 

The Boscawens had taken an apartment in 
the Avenue Martin; as Bobby pointed it out to 
Peter as they approached, they noticed that 


220 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 
the windows of the balconies of the third floor 
to which Bobby pointed with his cane, stood 
open. They learned from the concierge that 
the ladies were at home. Remembering Daph¬ 
ne’s squeeze of the hand Bobby wished them 
luck. Generously he hoped these two might 
find each other nicer than they had dreamed. 
As they stood waiting for the lift to be brought 
down from the top floor Bobby said, “ Daphne 

is bonnie, but she is no flighty, she’d-” 

Bobby paused; he flushed violently to the roots 
of his hair. “ She’d make any man a fine 
wife.” It was as near as he could come to tell¬ 
ing Peter to go in and win her. 

Peter had a pause while he wondered why 
Bobby didn’t enter the running since his enthu¬ 
siasm was so keen, but at that moment the lift 
descended. 

When they were shown into Lady Bosca- 
wen’s drawing-room she had not as yet come in 
from changing her dress. Daphne sat in a low 
chair by the window with a book on her knee. 
She sprang up to meet them and her dark, 



THAT WHICH IS PASSED 221 


misty eyes softened. Bobby’s lips pressed 
tightly together. He knew that she had seen 
Peter behind him and that for their softening 
Peter was the cause. A hazy glory of violet 
sky shone behind her head through the open 
window as her eager cui'ious gaze turned to 
Peter. Plow like she was to Lady Gilchrist, 
Peter thought. She gave him her hand and 
although he held it for a moment, did not offer 
to draw it away. It was Lady Boscawen’s 
entrance that forced them apart. She asked 
Peter some question and Peter, thinking of the 
likeness to Lady Gilchrist, stumbled, not ready 
with his answer. Quickly engaging Lady 
Boscawen in conversation Bobby entered the 
breach and with excellent tactics bore her off 
into the centre of the room as Peter and 
Daphne seated themselves in chairs by the win¬ 
dow. 

At the sight of Daphne suddenly and with¬ 
out warning the attraction which Peter had 
felt for her that night at the Opera reappeared. 
It was an attraction like that for a song of 


222 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

some faun’s singing, familiar yet strange, like, 
yet totally different to something he had 
known. It recalled him to the thought of 
Lady Gilchrist and the thought that now his 
own knowledge cut him off from her, made his 
heretofore delight in her self-conscious, and 
brought his meetings with her to an end. 
Pere Formol was his father. Pere Formol 
had known her, loved her and probably played 
her false. The father cut off the son from 
any consideration in her eyes. Peter had per¬ 
haps yielded to his adoration of Lady Gilchrist 
in his thoughts. Perhaps in thought he had 
woven about her those old fairy tales of his 
boyhood in Brittany of which she was the liv¬ 
ing embodiment, the Madonna, the one wor¬ 
shipped, the Beloved. A mother yet more 
than a mother. This love unquenched, scarcely 
human because unseen, became the shadow of 
the reality of another earthly love. Twined 
like the shadows of the trees above the bracken 
as Peter grew older the love of the Madonna 
changed into a love of the Beloved. Unknown 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 223 


to Peter as time went on there had crept into 
his boyhood’s dream a mystery, the reality of 
which he had not known. As he had not 
known the reality of the Madonna—Mother¬ 
hood—neither had he known the reality of the 
Beloved. His childhood’s wish for tenderness 
had gone unfulfilled, so might his desire go 
unfulfilled. 

This change in Peter had taken place with¬ 
out his knowledge, and from it came no revela¬ 
tion until the day that Peter had seen Lady 
Gilchrist. The first phase had been articulate, 
known with the mind, the second phase became 
inarticulate and could only become known by 
a palpable revelation of living senses. Thus 
only could the situation clarify and rid him of 
his long “ unquenchment.” It was evident 
that his mood was not known to himself. With 
Lady Gilchrist that day at the Pre Catalan the 
violet sky had become suddenly aflame, and he 
was glad as such moments make men glad of 
all the gifts of the universe, but still Peter did 
not know of the change in himself, of the shift 


224 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

from the Madonna to the Beloved. Still his 
idea of himself was that he sought tenderness 
and mysticism, still he did not know that his 
vision had shifted to the immemorial magnifi¬ 
cence of the reality of the senses. 

That Sunday afternoon as he watched 
Daphne, he watched, because of her curious 
likeness to the woman who had become the 
symbol of his unquenchable dream. 

And Daphne endeavoring to keep the con¬ 
versation going, looking at him and seeing his 
eyes intent on her, did not know that those 
eyes were looking through her to someone be¬ 
yond. Daphne unknowing felt her heart 
would not be stilled, but throbbed as though 
some danger were coming on itself. In a 
silence accompanied by the voices of others, a 
silence which Daphne tried heroically to break, 
a silence which grew mellower with each mo¬ 
ment of its duration, Daphne and Peter sat. 
And drawn to him by the shadows that flick¬ 
ered under and about the darkened iris of 
Peter’s eyes Daphne did not know that those 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 225 


dark lights were called forth by her likeness 
to another woman. As a movement in the 
deep of some quiet water may cause a flicker 
on a far high surface, so the thought in his soul 
of his Beloved had shivered into his eyes and 
Daphne, like some light-hearted Zephyr stray¬ 
ing upon a blown surface, took it for the effect 
of her own presence. 

If Peter had not seen Daphne again absence 
might have put an end to her attraction for 
him, but above Paris the sleepy stars looked 
down upon a Daphne awakened to Peter’s 
charm and Peter’s efficient aloofness. With 
another in his thoughts Peter could elude, with 
masculine aloofness, and with Peter in her 
mind with feminine tenacity Daphne prepared 
to see more of him. The days were full and 
rich with the warm full richness of summer, as 
slowly, steadily the year moved away from 
springlike anticipation to autumnal fulfilment. 
In the parks in the evening men sat upon the 
benches and removing their hats wiped the per¬ 
spiration from their brows, for the days were 


226 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

hot to bring the vintage to perfection. And 
soon in the provinces the purple juice of the 
ripe grapes would trickle over the hands of 
those who went to pluck the fruit of the vine¬ 
yards. The winds that blew upon Paris were 
full of the scent of blossoms; there was a smell 
of roses mingled with the subtle and wonderful 
scent of the blossoms of trellised vines and the 
turn of the new cut hay. And these scents 
blown in from the land beyond combined with 
the violet blue of the sky, intensified Peter’s 
reverie, intensified his mood that followed 
daily from the thoughts of tenderness of his 
boyhood, to the wish for demonstration that 
had taken possession of him unawares. And 
yet still it was not the material realization that 
mattered to him, but the mood, the reverie, the 
ache buttoned into his blue serge coat. Like 
two halves of some broken circle went Daphne 
and Peter. 

Daphne awake to Peter’s charm. Peter 
newly aroused to the swelling rapture of life. 
It began as it were to go on and Peter did not 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 227 


know where he stood. There was something 
pathetic in Peter’s gaze as of a man forced to 
love against his will, drawn in to the swelling 
rapture of life before the mind had given the 
word, until the comfortable ease of joy in boy¬ 
ish games had given way to the reverie, the 
perpetual ache. 

In this mood Peter one evening, a few days 
later, found himself alone with Daphne in her 
mother’s drawing-room. It was late after the 
Opera. Lady Boscawen and Bobby had gone 
to look for sandwiches and “ madeleines.” 
Peter and Daphne were left in the drawing- 
room standing facing each other. The com¬ 
fortable ease which is such a safeguard was 
gone out of Peter and to Daphne this was a 
moment for which she had waited. Like two 
worlds, actuated by no sense of volition, nor 
will, but by the blind gravitation of force, like 
two worlds that through time have steadily 
converged toward each other, Daphne and 
Peter drew together until Peter’s lips were on 
Daphne’s. An unpremeditated action of the 


228 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

offending drift of time. But suddenly, with 
the touch of her lips against his lips, Peter’s 
mind sprang to life, awakened from the drift 
of time. He drew back and to his own amaze¬ 
ment, he saw not the face that was always be¬ 
fore him, with the deep expression that at¬ 
tracted him so strongly, but to his amazement 
Peter saw another face, a face soft, quivering, 
alive like the face of his reverie, a face with in¬ 
deed a great resemblance to the face of his 
reverie, but empty of so much that was in it. 
Empty because it was young, because it had 
not lived, because although the eyes were deep 
and dark and misty and the skin had the same 
olive paleness, in it as yet there was no grip of 
feeling, no knowledge of the heights and depths 
of life, no power to hold out its glow and give 
freedom to another soul. And as he looked 
seeing in this vision only emptiness, Peter’s 
arms, which had been outstretched to Daphne, 
fell to his side. And with a sharp in taken 
sigh he turned and walking to the door left the 
room, caring nothing for the girl that he was 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 229 


leaving, in comparison to the memory that he 
felt he tarnished by looking at her. 

Taking his hat from the stand and letting 
himself into the hall, Peter did not wait for 
the lift but walked down the three flights of 
stairs that led to the street. At that hour few 
people were passing and any life seemed to be 
concentrated in the lighted windows, that like 
brightly polished jewels illuminated the dark 
walls of the houses. Here behind a drawn cur¬ 
tain appeared for a moment the silhouette of 
a woman, there a blind was up and Peter saw 
a red table-cloth with a lamp upon it. Beyond 
came the murmur of the jolting and rumbling 
of the Champs Elysees, with its tumbling cur¬ 
rents of cabs, and as Peter turned toward its 
lightened spaces stretching between trees and 
lamp posts, its noise and interlaced glitter, its 
perpetual haze that is always rising like a sigh 
that has escaped from parted lips, he was 
struck by the harmony of the environment with 
his mood. 

Peter stumbled along the pavement; the 


230 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

moon was just mounting above the Arc de 
Triomphe and the hazy glory of the moonlight 
mingled with the electric light and the gas light 
and the stars, and Peter’s one consolation was 
that he was here. Walking, walking, walking, 
Peter wondered, moralizing, thinking can it be 
that he, Peter, loved two women and yet how 
otherwise could he have behaved as he did? 
Thinking did he indeed love Daphne, then the 
path was easy and the border bright, but even 
as he said it, the words burned through him 
that he loved another. What was happening 
to him? What were these flute notes sound¬ 
ing in his ears ? What was this flower that had 
grown to blossom in the darkness of his soul? 
He would turn from it and love Daphne and 
the blossom of a night would die. “ Would 
it? ” sounded the flute notes in his ears. 
“ Would it die? ” He would purge himself of 
all emotion and love Daphne. Through the 
night Peter walked, through the silence broken 
by the sound of wheels gliding over the asphalt, 
he tried to come to a decision. The high cur- 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 231 


rents of air took the clouds and they floated 
away up the Champs Elysees over the Arc 
Triomphe covering for a moment the glory of 
the hanging moon, as they floated on past the 
forests of houses to the forests of trees. And 
as Peter stood in the Place de la Concorde, he 
took his decision. He said, “ I must not see 
Daphne any more.” 

And as he said it and turned back to Paris 
and the night, he thought of two verses written 
by an Englishman who loved Paris. And 
remembering that they went something like 
this, he said them out loud: 

“ My Paris is a land where twilight days 
Merge into violent nights of black and gold; 
Where it may be the flower of dawn is cold;: 

Ah! but the gold nights and the scented w r ays! 

“ And every woman with beseeching eyes, 

Or with enticing eyes, or amorous, 

Offers herself, a rose, and craves of us 
A rose’s place among our memories.” 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


Amid the debris of his future Peter won¬ 
dered. All that he liked in life had forsaken 
him, but the days would drag on although hope 
was gone out of them. One of the most tell¬ 
ing scenes in stagecraft is to see a man, or a 
woman, come on to the stage with hope, con¬ 
fidence, love of life in full swing and leave it 
twenty minutes later, with every semblance of 
these things destroyed. The aspect of this 
sudden change is forceful, dynamic, of the 
very essence of drama, too much so to be “ real 
life,” we think. And yet it is life even in its 
suddenness. The thrills that lead up to these 
crises take time, but in the end action hastens 
itself needlessly. 

Dreams had always pursued Peter. The 
unreally beautiful, the beautiful unreal. For 
a long time the facade of his life would show 

no signs of them. Outward decorum was sub- 
232 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 233 


stituted for the inlaid pattern, but although 
the colors of what kept him alive were in 
subordination, they were always there, sunset 
colors burning the sky of his existence; his 
dream a river where the tide flowed swiftly 
enough to keep him alive. And there was 
always in his consciousness a curious sense of 
something in himself that he could refer to— 
his sense of magic—his last resource—his 
dream. 

The straws pointing to the current in this 
dark river of his being have been mentioned. 
Briefly repeated, they were the adoration of 
her he fancied to be his mother. With all her 
beauty, a woman of women, keeping her tradi¬ 
tions quietly, content with them, not trying to 
make new things of them. A beautiful woman 
of the type of the early sixties, perhaps, though 
born later, content with the old limits and with 
things as they were, and with, therefore, in her 
contentment continual gifts to bestow. A 
woman young enough to be a heritage of 
poetry for her son. A woman whose beauty 


234 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

was force, existence itself, but whose very 
wariSth was tempered by a message from the 
spirit. In short, a young man’s dream of an 
ideal mother. And another straw drifting 
close to this one and because of it in Peter’s 
enchanted river, was the quest of honor. The 
fine thing done in a fine way. Because of the 
beauty, there must perforce be the rendering 
of service. The gift demanded the offertory. 
And both, instead of absorbing him too much, 
would free him from the tyranny of the senses, 
and bring his vision up to the clear breadth of 
the sky, like stones whose picturesque heaping 
makes at last a tower. 

So far Peter had not been in revolt against 
society; because his dream was with him, the 
river took the course he had chosen. Now this 
was gone. An obstacle had arisen to divert 
the stream. He would grow quiet. He would 
no longer bubble with enthusiasm for life. He 
had something he was ashamed of, something 
to hide. “A man has only his life to lose,” he 
thought. “To lose it sooner, or later, he must, 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 235 


but now there is this idea in me that a casual 
stranger may touch to bring me down, the idea 
that I had a shambling father.” He never 
remembered what he did the evening after his 
interview with Pere Formol. He had no 
recollection of having dined. Vaguely, he 
remembered walking in the night, moving with 
the crowd, hoping the stars above the lights of 
Paris, the cool and murmuring night would 
free him from the tyranny of his new-found 
heredity. Vaguely he remembered that in 
spite of his hopes he felt no gradual descent 
into his heart of the atmosphere of repose, and 
that the pathetic casual mingling with the life 
in the streets only served to complete his sense 
of desolation, of being, as it were, “ done ” by 
something that had happened before he was 
born. 

Then all at once in his wanderings he had 
found himself at home in his room, as if here 
between these four walls was a concrete refuge. 
The day had emptied itself into the night. 
The streets had emptied themselves into the 


286 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 
houses. In the process of shifting shadows, 
Peter found himself at home. 

Said Peter to himself, “ I have lived in my 
dreams. They are gone out of me. Perhaps 
some day I shall think of them without hurt, 
but not yet. It is too soon.” So people 
adjust themselves to change. 

When Peter aw r oke next morning, he real¬ 
ized that something had made him feel very 
sad, but at the moment of full waking con¬ 
sciousness when he remembered what it was, he 
determined to write a note to his chief sending 
in his resignation and excusing himself from 
putting in an appearance at the office that day. 
This done, he meant to borrow an aeroplane, 
belonging to a man he knew, and go off for a 
%• 

It was late in the morning when Peter 
finished writing the note to his chief. And 
when at last, after tearing up two or three 
copies, he wrote one he determined to send, a 
kind of mental nausea seized him as he put it 
in the envelope. The nausea of feeling him- 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 237 

self caught in a trap, a grotesque trap. Had 
he behaved like a romantic boy? And yet he 
could think of no other way. Did Fate work 
blindly, or was there some strange Nemesis 
working through human life? 

Well, he would have this one day, flying in 
the sky, and then to-morrow life would move 
forward at its own pace and he would come 
down to it, allow it to engulf him, face the 
definite facts of his existence. Once more up 
there in the sky he would open his arms to life, 
dream his dreams. Flying swiftly through 
the air, he would believe life all he had hoped 
it to be, a magic thing, clean, sweet with an in¬ 
heritance of chivalry, a promise of> gifts, the 
gift of honor and the gift of love. 

Once more he would fly through high heaven 
and open his arms to life—up there something 
would come to him not from the crooked 
houses, or the tall buildings, but from the trees, 
the fields, the narrow rivers something would 
come up to him out of the earth, something 
abiding, something that bound man and man 


238 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 


together, that shifted the weight of the burden, 
the burden not only of those things that man 
brings upon himself, but the pre-birth burden 
of inheritance. This something from the earth 
would shift it until it lay evenly upon the 
shoulders of all. Life not only a battle of 
to-day, but of yesterday, all the yesterdays. 
A big warfare to fight in one life—all the 
tendencies of the ages. 

Up in the clouds until the evening he would 
fly gathering from the earth below a pantheistic 
peace. Once more he would fly swiftly with 
his dreams as he would have wished to fly 
through life and then at nightfall he would 
come down to earth again. 


PART III 


PETER MAGDALEN 




CHAPTER XXIX 


Sir Jocelyn Gilchrist was reading the 
daily Paris sheet of the New York Herald . 
He read through the list of the people staying 
at the different hotels, and then his eye fell on 
this head-line: 

“ Death Mystifies Paris Police 
Aged Engraver of Precious Metals Found 
Dead in His Shop " 

It attracted his attention and he read the 
paragraph below it. “ Here’s a strange thing, 
Mary,” he said to his wife, who was seated at 
the writing table writing letters. Lady Gil¬ 
christ was sitting with her back to her husband. 
When he spoke she half turned her profile to¬ 
ward him to let him see that she was listening. 
This was what Sir Jocelyn read: 

“ Paris, August 23.—The Paris police to¬ 
day were notified of one of those sad deaths, 
241 


242 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 


which cause sympathetic thoughts to even 
hardened officers of the law; moreover this case 
is attended by mysterious and romantic ele¬ 
ments. 

“ Father Formol, an old silversmith and 
engraver of precious metals, was found this 
morning lying dead in his little workshop sit¬ 
uated in one of the narrow, cobbled streets at 
the back of the Palais Royal. 

“ The white-haired, strange old man was a 
familiar figure in the whole quarter, where 
young and old were accustomed to salute him 
with a friendly 4 Bon jour, Pere Formol,’ when¬ 
ever he passed by, though some, prompted by a 
certain resemblance he bore to the great 
French writer Anatole France, addressed him 
as 4 Pere Beranger.’ 

44 Father Formol sometimes had a word for 
those who greeted him, sometimes he did not re¬ 
ply to the greeting. He was a man of moods. 
And everybody thought that having known 
him so long they knew him well, knew all about 
him. Yet to-day the very first difficulty which 
confronts the police is that nobody can supply 
information as to his real identity. 

44 On account of his distinguished bearing 
and educated manner of conversing, it was 
generally surmised that he had seen better 
days, but Father Formol, although never 
denying this when it was suggested, and 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 243 


sometimes even going so far as to admit 
that he might, had he not met with an un¬ 
fortunate romance in his early life, have 
been filling to-day a high post in his coun¬ 
try’s service, never confided the details of his 
past even to those with whom he was most 
intimate. 

“ Three or four times during the last ten 
years the curiosity of the neighborhood was 
excited when a smart carriage, and at a later 
period a big limousine, drove up the little street 
and stopped at Pere Formol’s door. From it 
each time stepped a fashionably gowned but 
heavily veiled woman who remained closeted in 
the workshop for several hours, and then dis¬ 
appeared as mysteriously as she had arrived. 
Last evening this stray visitor appeared again, 
a few hours, according to police calculations, 
before Formol died. The police doubt that the 
visit was anything more than one of those 
strange coincidences which occur. The fact re¬ 
mains, however, that the last time the dead 
man was seen alive yesterday by his neighbor 
opposite was when Pere Formol accompanied 
his visitor from his workshop and assisted her 
into her automobile. 

“ These are the only clues to this strange 
romance, if romance there was. And the shift¬ 
ing fortune of a man who put aside his oppor¬ 
tunities to work quietly with precious metals 


244 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 


in a little workshop behind the Palais Royal 
cannot long retain the attention of the public. 
But it is brought home to Parisian life that 
one more foreigner has come from his own 
land to lose himself in its great sea. And 
among the roots of its still waters one more 
foreigner has found his lasting rest.” 

“ It is rather an extraordinary thing,” said 
Sir Jocelyn. “ I wonder who he was. I sup¬ 
pose some Englishman living in Paris. They 
say more of our countrymen drift to the con¬ 
tinent and lose themselves than we have any 
idea of. Younger sons, you know. Poor beg¬ 
gars that have fallen on the wrong foot.” 

Two spots of red appeared in Lady Gil¬ 
christ’s white cheeks. She had turned her 
profile back to the writing table. 

“Are you interested?” asked Sir Jocelyn. 
“ I thought you’d be interested. You are gen¬ 
erally interested in romantic episodes, partic¬ 
ularly if they are about some lame dog.” 

“ Of course I am interested,” she said at last. 
Her voice sounded a little unsteady. “ Read 
it—read it again, Jossy.” 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 245 

Sir Jocelyn raised the paper slowly and read 
again. When he had finished he put down the 
paper and looked at his wife. 

“Do you know anything about him?” he 
asked. He looked at the back of his wife’s 
head. 

“ It is quite pathetic,” she said presently. 
Pier voice sounded quite natural again. Sir 
Jocelyn went on looking, wondering what was 
going on in the mind under the wavy hair. 
Whimsically it struck him that he had never 
got through the wavy hair to the mind be¬ 
neath. But his own mind was suddenly alert, 
suddenly very conscious and sure that in spite 
of her sang froid, in spite of her steadied voice, 
his wife was strongly moved by this news. 
The something that did not speak in her sud¬ 
denly sent out a message, a quivering of the 
nerves to the something that did not speak in 
him. All at once he was alive to the fact that 
she was feeling something keenly, that this 
news apparently had some special significance 
for her and had somehow struck her on the 


246 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 
raw. She must know the man then, she must 
know who he was. His eyes rested on the 
wavy hair asking a question. 

He took off his glasses and held them be¬ 
tween his finger and thumb. How often he 
had wondered what went on in Mary's head. 
He rested the eye-glasses upon the paper. It 
was evident to him now that Mary had asked 
him to read the paragraph again, so that she 
could collect herself. Was this the key to her 
unconquered heart? He had often felt him¬ 
self too staid a comrade, too prosaic to enter 
into her colorful thoughts. Was this the 
key? 

Lady Gilchrist bent over the writing table 
again. Sir Jocelyn waited to hear the sound 
of the pen scratching on the paper. He felt 
that if he heard it the news was meaningless, 
his suspicions were groundless. He waited 
what seemed to him a long time. He heard 
nothing. Lady Gilchrist's arm did not move. 
At last he could stand it no longer. 

“ Are you writing, Mary? ” he asked. 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 247 


“ Yes, Jossy,” she said. 

After that he heard the pen moving on the 
paper. 


CHAPTER XXX 


Lady Gilchrist was as though all her life 
she had stood looking at a hill, a wonderful 
hill full of color, seen always exactly from the 
same angle and then suddenly something hap¬ 
pened and the view changed. Her life, which 
had been one kind of a life, suddenly became 
another kind of a life. What had happened 
to her was this, that the distance between her 
and the hill had suddenly lessened. It became 
attainable. It had hitherto been unattainable. 
The difficulty lay in the fact that there was a 
black bit of road to be crossed first. It was 
in her ability to cross the black bit of road 
that depended all the happiness of her future 
life. The change was so sudden, so unex¬ 
pected, it was almost as though the sun had 

gone down over the horizon following its daily 
248 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 249 

custom and had then come up again and 
flooded the world with an unsuspected ray of 
light. 

“ God exists,” she thought and braced her¬ 
self for the bit of black road. 

As Lady Gilchrist drove along the streets 
that led to number fifty-one it seemed to her 
that the neighborhood was more silent and 
quiet. How she knew that street, every stone 
and corner of it. When a woman in love 
passes along a street she sees nothing. When 
love is gone she sees every doorway, every 
stone of the hard gray pavement. 

That day Gilly Collins was to be buried at 
Fontainebleau. 

Jocelyn had read it out of the paper. She 
had imagined that as he read it Jocelyn was 
watching her, but that was absurd; he was not 
the man to spy on any woman. 

At the door of number fifty-one she got 
down, gave a hasty glance at the shop and saw 
that the shutters were up, then she made her 
way to the concierge’s room at the foot of the 


250 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

staircase. She looked through the glass win¬ 
dow of the door and saw Na-Na inside iron¬ 
ing. Seeing no one else, she tapped on the 
door and turned the handle. The old peasant 
looked up from her ironing. “ Miladi,” she 
said, “ Miladi.” 

Lady Gilchrist closed the door. 

“Yes, Na-Na,” she said hurriedly; “you 
must help me. I have not much time. ‘ La 
Pere,’ you understand, had some letters of 
mine. I am afraid they may be found with 
his papers. You must take me either to his 
office, or to his room, wherever you think they 
are.” 

Na-Na stood transfixed. 

“ You must help me, Na-Na,” said Lady 
Gilchrist. “You must help me quickly before 
anyone comes.” 

In that moment she was feeling afraid of 
being discovered by someone. She was stand¬ 
ing with her back against the door. She no¬ 
ticed that a cat had jumped on to the table 
where Na-Na was ironing and was rubbing 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 251 

its side against a pan that held some damp¬ 
ened clothes. 

In Na-Na’s eyes was something that was 
hopelessly puzzled. 

“ Miladi.” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Surely it would be better—not to bother— 
to go—to leave everything.” 

“ I must have the letters.” 

“ But-” 

“ It is my business, Na-Na. I have made 
up my mind. You have been a long time faith¬ 
ful, Na-Na. I have never had any trouble 
with you. I think I have been a generous mis¬ 
tress.” 

“ Oh, yes, Miladi, indeed you have.” 

“ Then hold your tongue and go as I tell 
you. Take me to the room where Pere Formol 
kept his private papers. Find me his keys, so 
that if they are locked away I may unlock 
them. And then, Na-Na, leave me alone and 
see that no one comes to interrupt me.” 

“ But Miladi-” 




252 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

“ Do as I say,” said Lady Gilchrist. And 
from her tone Na-Na knew in her bones that 
remonstrance was useless. 

“ You stay here,” she said, “ until I go up 
and get the keys. He kept his papers in the 
desk in his shop.” 

“ Hurry,” said Lady Gilchrist, with a sud¬ 
den piteous look. This that she was doing was 
dreadfully distasteful to her. The bit of black 
road she must travel by herself before she 
crossed to safety and the hill topped by the 
sun. 

When Na-Na left, she did not sit down. In¬ 
stead she stood in the small, half dark con¬ 
cierge’s room watching the gray cat rub its 
side against the pan of dampened clothes. 

“ I will make it right,” she said to herself. 
“ If only I get these letters now. I will make 
it right for Na-Na—for Jossy—for myself.” 
When once she had them in her hands, how 
great her relief would be. “ If only we never 
had to do these things in life,” she thought. 
The cold, perfect Grecian beauty of truth, and 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 253 
yet there are times when some impulsive ac¬ 
tion, something one has done, makes absolute 
truth impossible if one would preserve one’s 
personal quiet of mind. She was a prisoner. 
A prisoner of a moment, imprisoned by a mad 
foolish action of youth; but that peace of mind 
should be preserved in the conventional circle 
of her life, it was necessary for a few moments 
that she do something utterly foreign to all 
her instincts. That done, the foolish action 
would be buried forever under dead leaves to 
lie in the decomposing mold of forgetfulness 
and die. Na-Na’s clock, a cheap instrument 
with a loud tick, suddenly stopped ticking with 
a rhythmic tick and gave several hurried taps 
as if some disturbing thought had got into its 
works. Lady Gilchrist started. The cat 
looked up and stopped its purring. Where 
was Na-Na? Why in the world didn’t she 
come? Lady Gilchrist had wasted no time. 
She had, in fact, timed her visit with great 
care. “ Pere Formol,” the paper had said, 
“ was to be buried that morning at Fontaine- 


254 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

bleau.” Any friends or officials who had gone 
to the funeral had not time to be back yet; this 
was early afternoon. With excuses, with lies 
that she hated, she had evaded Jossy at de¬ 
jeuner. She had shaken him off, she was here. 
Her part, the part that she had thought out 
while lying awake in the darkness for two 
nights had not failed. She was here on time. 
She would search and find and be gone before 
anyone returned and then the one episode of 
her life of which she was ashamed would be 
buried forever; but where was Na-Na? All 
her fear of being discovered rushed upon her. 
She could not follow Na-Na and hurry her; 
she might miss her. She did not know to what 
room she had gone. She was tingling all over 
with a feeling as if all the blood had suddenly 
sunk away from her temples. She could stand 
it no longer; she prepared to go up the stairs 
and look for Na-Na. Mechanically she pulled 
herself together. Finally she opened the door 
and listened. The stone steps began their as¬ 
cent from the door of the concierge’s room. 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 255 


At last her straining ears heard the echo of a 
heavy tread. Two flights up, perhaps, but 
steadily descending, coming nearer, was the 
slow, heavy tread of the soil, the tread that is 
without imagination, that is neither hastened 
nor retarded by thought, the tread whose pace 
is like the hour-glass, for it is drawn from the 
elements. 

“ Na-Na, surely Na-Na,” breathlessly Lady 
Gilchrist waited. 

“ Eh, mon Dieu,” said Na-Na, appearing 
around the bend of the stair. “ Eh, mon 
Dieu.” She came a few steps further down 
and held up a bunch of keys. Lady Gilchrist 
gave a little gasp of relief. Her eyes turned 
eagerly to the keys in Na-Na’s hand. 

“ Thank you, Na-Na,” she said. “ Now 
take me to his office.” 

Together they went along the little passage¬ 
way under the arcade. From the door out 
of the arcade and not from the door which led 
into the street Na-Na proposed to take Lady 
Gilchrist into the shop. Na-Na searched for 


256 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

its key on Pere Formol’s ring as they stood 
before it. At last she found it, put it in the 
keyhole, turned the lock and turning the knob 
opened the door into the shop. 

For three days apparently no one had been 
in here. It was dark; the front shutters had 
not been taken down. It was damp from the 
unsunned ground of an old building. Its air 
was charged with a heavy musty smell. Here, 
if there had been a final struggle between life 
and death, one would have felt sure that death 
would win. Lady Gilchrist shivered as she 
crossed the threshold. 

“ It is dark, Na-Na,” she said. 

“ Better light the light,” said Na-Na. “ If 
I open the shutters the neighbors might won¬ 
der. All that in the papers has raised their 
curiosity. They are full of questions now as 
to who Pere Formol was.” 

Na-Na closed the door behind her and went 
across to turn on the light. 

“ I think, Miladi,” said Na-Na, “ that he 
kept his papers in a tin box in the deep drawer 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 257 

of the writing desk. Once he opened it to give 
me money.” 

The reflector on the wall cast the electric 
light on the writing table. Lady Gilchrist saw 
a lamp on the table; she turned that on to give 
herself more light. 

“ Find the key of the drawer for me, 
Na-Na,” she said, “ and then go. As soon as 
I find what I want I will come to your room. 
In the meantime don’t let anyone come here.” 

“ They are not back from the funeral. 
There is no danger, but Miladi—Miladi is not 
afraid? It smells of death,” she said, crossing 
herself. 

“ Hush,” said Lady Gilchrist. “ Find me 
the key.” 

Slowly Na-Na’s fingers touched two or three 
of the keys on the bunch. She found one, put 
it in the lock of the drawer; it turned. 

Lady Gilchrist’s face was scarlet now, her 
forehead was burning. The excitement in her 
blew up and down like a little flame in the 
wind. 


258 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

“ Go and watch now, Na-Na,” she said 
huskily. “ Leave me. When I am ready I 
will come.” 

Na-Na got up from her knees from which 
position she had been trying the key in the 
lock, and moved toward the door. At the door 
she turned. 

“You wish it like this?” she asked anx¬ 
iously. 

“ Yes. Yes. See that I am not disturbed.” 

“ Very good, Miladi.” Na-Na went out and 
closed the door after her. 

When she was left alone, Lady Gilchrist’s 
excitement increased. She was not a hysterical 
woman. She had a steady nerve, was self- 
possessed, but this room gave her the creeps. 
“ Imagination,” she said to herself. She 
pulled on the deep, heavy mahogany drawer. 
In the front, tied with pink tape, were several 
bundles of papers, letters, and some bundles 
of what apparently looked like blue-print de¬ 
signs. It was only when Lady Gilchrist had 
taken these out and laid them on the top of the 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 259 


desk that she saw lying at the back of the 
drawer a square, gray tin box. She decided 
to look hurriedly through the other papers first. 
She undid the tape tying the letters together 
and turned them hurriedly over; many of them 
bore a London postmark and were addressed 
in a thin, fine Italian hand. Lady Gilchrist 
did not open them. She had not come to spy, 
she had come merely to claim what had once 
been hers. On one envelope she saw written 
in Pere FormoPs writing, “ Varducci’s method 
of using corrosive on copper.” The letters 
were from his old master then. Hurriedly 
Lady Gilchrist turned them over; what she 
sought was not here. She took the bundle oi 
papers, some of them apparently legal docu¬ 
ments ; there were no letters among them. The 
package must be in the tin box. It was a 
square box and was rather difficult to dislodge 
as it nearly fitted the drawer and had to be 
lifted out evenly, otherwise it stuck against the 
sides. It was heavy too. Lady Gilchrist 
lifted it out, having first cleared a space on the 


260 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 


writing table to hold it. As she did so she 
noticed P£re Formol’s pipe lying on the tray. 
He had not blown it out. The ashes were still 
in the bowl. A pang almost of pity went 
through her. 

She took the bunch of keys out of the lock 
of the drawer and began searching for the key 
of the padlock of the box. It was not difficult 
to find as it was a small brass key. She turned 
the lock, undid the padlock and was just on 
the point of opening the box when the door 
by which she had entered opened, letting- 
in a ray of light which attracted her at- 
tion. Starting, she looked up and to her 
amazement saw Peter standing in the door¬ 
way. 

“ You here? ” he said. 

Peter hesitated, then apparently making up 
his mind he came in and shut the door behind 
him. 

“ I have just come back from his funeral,” 
he explained. “ I saw the light shining 
through the shutters and wondered who was in 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 261 

here. I hope I don’t disturb you. I should 
like to speak to you for a moment.” 

Lady Gilchrist responded automatically to 
the training she had had in the world to appear 
in extraordinary circumstances as though there 
was nothing unusual. She remembered to hold 
out her hand. 

As Peter came forward to take it, even in 
her chagrin at being found in this inexplicable 
position, she noticed the wistful, hungry ex¬ 
pression in his face. 

“ You were fond of him? You are griev¬ 
ing.” 

“ No,” said Peter, looking down on the floor, 
“ it is not that.” There was a restrained emo¬ 
tion in his voice. He seemed to be struggling 
with something within himself. One owned 
up to those who belonged to one even if one 
were ashamed of them. 

“ I hate to tell you,” said Peter stumblingly, 
“ he was my father. I didn’t know it myself 
the day you came to Versailles with me. He 
told me after. I didn’t want you to know. I 


262 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

felt you despised him, that what you had 
known about him hadn’t led you to respect 
him. I—I thought so much of you I didn’t 
want you to have me in your thoughts as his 
son. But he is gone now. I must be square. 
Even at the risk of your thinking less of me. 
I would rather tell you the truth. Be¬ 
sides -” 

Peter broke off. He stood there without 
moving, staring at Lady Gilchrist and she felt 
that the memory of his eyes would always hurt 
her. He stood there as though carved in stone, 
but his eyes were blazing with pain and they 
did not seem to see her. He looked past her 
and if she had not seen the live agony of his 
eyes she would have thought that he was ab¬ 
sorbed in something that lay very far from the 
little darkened shop. 

Lady Gilchrist had no thoughts at this mo¬ 
ment beyond the fact that it was she who ought 
to feel very greatly embarrassed at being 
found in such a position, such an inexplicable 
position as the act of looking through a dead 



THAT WHICH IS PASSED 263 


man’s private papers. But all the embarrass¬ 
ment in the room seemed to have gravitated to 
Peter. He stood with an ill-at-ease, heavy ex¬ 
pression on his face, and his eyes lowered into 
the shadows of the wall as if they sought some 
darkness in which to hide themselves. In spite 
of herself Lady Gilchrist was struck by the 
burning, shamed expression in his eyes. That, 
perhaps, was one of the worst moments in 
Peter’s life, for Lady Gilchrist was the woman 
who had made life real to him. 

Lady Gilchrist was thinking, “ How can I 
get him to go away so that I can get what I have 
come for? ” Peter was thinking, “ I told her 
he was my father. She has said nothing. She 
must despise him even more than I thought. 
I must let her know she need have no fear of 
any letters of his being used. I am ashamed. 
Perhaps she thinks like father, like son.” 

Peter loved her at that moment. She was 
so beautiful standing looking at him, her pale 
skin was such a marvellous setting for her won¬ 
derful dark eyes. Her voice was deep and low 


264 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 
and when she was moved a little husky. When 
she smiled she had great charm. Peter felt 
bitterly that he would always be associated in 
her mind as the son of a man who would have 
used her letters for the purpose of blackmail. 
Peter was proud of his composure, he had him¬ 
self well in hand, but there was a strange long¬ 
ing in his face. She with her pale face, her 
magnificent eyes, meant so much to him. And 
in her eyes, through no fault of his, he felt he 
appeared somehow all wrong. Still he could 
not relieve her of his presence. He first must 
let her know how she stood. There was some¬ 
thing pathetic in Peter’s face, as of a man 
forced to do something against his will. 

Skating on thin ice it would be, he might so 
easily offend, but one way or another he had to 
convey his information. 

“ Lady Gilchrist,” he said and stopped. It 
was as though the words were forced out of 
him against his will. 

Directly Lady Gilchrist heard her name she 
looked up at him, at his eyes that were staring 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 265 
into the shadows of the room. The tone of his 
voice had upon her a sentimental effect. 

“ What I have to say,” continued Peter, “ is 
a little difficult. If I am gauche, I hope you 
will remember that I am young and unsophis¬ 
ticated. If I hurt your feelings, please re¬ 
member that I would rather be shot where I 
stand than do it.” 

Suddenly Lady Gilchrist’s hatred of being 
found in this position died. She forgot her¬ 
self and she longed to do something to take 
the queer desperate look out of Peter’s face. 

Peter made an awkward movement which 
caught the corner of the table and shook it. 

“ Perhaps,” he said, “ you will forgive me 
more if I say that ever since the moment that 
I first saw you at Galignini’s bookstore I 
have thought of nothing but you. It was as if 
I had been waiting for you all my life and then 
you came, as if in my heart I had out of the 
moments and the years been carving a picture 
frame and you stepped into it. When I saw 
you I knew it was for you I had always been 


266 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 
waiting and from that moment I knew that I 
would rather my life ebbed away drop by drop 
than that for you a cloud should pass over the 
sun, or you should ever suffer any pain. I tell 
you all this so that you may guess how hard 
it is for me to bring myself to say anything 
that might slightly displease you.” 

Peter stood with his eyes still lowered to the 
shadows on the wall. In the same dull tone, 
as though the heart were gone out of him, he 
went on: 

“ From the moment I first saw you a secret 
current was let loose in me, set flowing to some 
ultimate goal. I wanted to do something fine, 
so that you might hear of it. I wanted to be 
grander in some way, to grow physically, so 
that I might be the tallest and strongest man 
that you had seen. You can imagine how 
pleased I was—what wonderful luck it seemed 
when I came into Pere Formol’s shop that day 
and was introduced to you. It seemed some¬ 
how the most stupendous luck. I really felt 
fate had a hand in it. And then when you 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 267 

came to tea with me and talked about my fu¬ 
ture as if you really cared, I thought somehow 
it was too good to be true, it was ripping.” 

Lady Gilchrist gazed at Peter. The mo¬ 
ment held her. Peter gave an uneasy little 
laugh as though to change the key. “ Well! ” 
he said. “ You were my dream and I found 
you.” 

Across Lady Gilchrist’s face flitted a half- 
startled look. 

“ And then one day I came back here and 
I had words with Pere Formol. He had al¬ 
ways been wanting me to apprentice myself to 
him. Follow art, you know. I didn’t want to 
from the start, and after that day at Versailles 
when you seemed so sympathetic about my 
career, I was more determined than ever not 
to do it. He threatened me about something 
and we had words, and then he told me he was 
my father. It was like plunging me into an 
icy river. Somehow I didn’t want him to be 
my father. I didn’t ask him why he had kept 
himself so dark all these years. I meant to 


268 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 


later, but I couldn’t then. My mother had 
always seemed to me someone like you are. 
Old Bland the lawyer woke that up in me. 
And all my life I had lived in my dream of 
her. Other chaps had mothers they went home 
to, sisters they would pal up with; I had that. 
You see, the hardest part of knowing Pere 
Formol was my father was feeling my mother 
couldn’t have been what I had thought. His 
being my father killed it, the thing that had 
kept me happy.” 

Lady Gilchrist sank down into the chair by 
the writing table as if she were tired. Peter 
neither looked at her nor seemed to notice, but 
went on. 

“ I rather kept away from him. I didn’t 
want to hear him speak of my mother and I 
was afraid that he would. And then one day 
he mentioned you. This,” said Peter, “ is what 
I have been leading up to. He told me he had 
some letters of yours. I did not, of course, 
take him seriously that there was anything in 
them except the kind heart of a woman in your 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 269 


position speaking to a man in his. He said he 
could show them to your husband.” 

Lady Gilchrist started; she was deathly pale 
and her eyes were lowered, focussed on some 
point on the table. “ That if he did, it would 
make it unpleasant for you. Again I did not 
take this seriously except that, of course, any¬ 
thing in the nature of a threat, no matter how 
unfounded, must be unpleasant for you. I 
know I am guilty of indelicacy in mentioning 
this, but I feel you must know that if there 
are any letters from you to him from the mo¬ 
ment they are found, they will be guarded 
most sacredly until they are returned to you.” 
Peter stood staring at the shadows on the wall. 
“ And so, Lady Gilchrist, you understand, that 
whatever you may think of me, or my inherited 
tendencies, I would rather be shot where I am, 
than that anything unpleasant should ever 
touch you.” 

Looking up and catching Lady Gilchrist’s 
eye, Peter tried to smile. That smile smote 
her to the heart. He seemed so abnormally 


270 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

depressed with everything. Supposing he 
should do something rash. Two thoughts 
clawed at each other in Mary Gilchrist’s breast. 
Long ago, she had been forced to decide be¬ 
tween someone else’s happiness and preserving 
the suave, even tenor of her own life. Her 
family, her mother and her brother had 
brought influence to bear upon her and she had 
chosen to cut away any obstacles that might 
disturb her even floating on the stream of life. 
Thus she had chosen. And she had almost 
never regretted it, except once or twice per¬ 
haps in some rare moment when the soul thinks 
of the “ might have been.” Again it seemed to 
her as if she had to make the same choice once 
more. And she would have been quite content 
to stand aside if only Peter had not tried to 
smile. She had so little of this quality of in** 
timating “ Never mind, it doesn’t matter ” that 
she could not divine where it might lead Peter. 
She took out her handkerchief. She touched 
her lips with it. “ It is very oppressive in 
here,” she said. 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 271 

Peter did not reply to that; whether it was 
hot, or cold, mattered so little. Suddenly, un¬ 
able to bear it any longer, Lady Gilchrist 
cried: 

“ Oh, Peter, don’t grieve like that.” Her 
overwrought nerves had lost their composure. 
Peter’s youngness was so apparent in his 
misery that it touched her who had a love for 
youth. The blackness, the hitter aching, the 
sensation of ashes and disgust, were beating 
in Peter’s face. And all that had been in 
prison in Mary Gilchrist broke loose. 

“ How can I help it? ” said Peter. “ No 
one like I dreamed of would have married 
Pere Formol.” 

The winged bird was stirring in Mary Gil¬ 
christ’s heart. The white linen above her heart 
was fluttering. “ But you must,” she said. 
The breath of the morning was beating in the 
air. “ You must believe it, because it is true.” 
The issue had passed the conventions to mother 
love. “ Pere Formol, you yourself have told 
me, had two natures. Pere Formol was not al- 


272 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

ways what he was when you saw him. He was 
the best looking man of his year at Magdalen, 
and with it he had some quality as if some 
sweet spirit had drawn near to him in wonder, 
whether it would take his body for an earthly 
temple. It changed its mind, but while it was 
near him he was wonderful.” 

Like a star behind heavy clouds the thought 
shone out. “ My second brother was at Ox¬ 
ford that year and I went down for the boat 
race,” painful as this was to Mary Gilchrist 
she did not waver now. “ I met Pere Formol 
(his name was Gilly Collins then). He was 
twenty, I was seventeen. We fell in love with 
each other.” 

Peter looked up at her. No other human 
being had ever had just that effect on him. 
For a moment Peter controlled himself with 
difficulty, then he put his hand up to his eyes, 
and the bitterness he was feeling went into his 
words, as his eyes turned on her defiantly. 

“ Why this subterfuge? ” he said. “ Never 
will things be the same to me again. I looked 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 273 

up at the sky fearlessly. I wanted to do the 
decent thing and out of the sky came a hand 
and struck me full in the face.” 

Lady Gilchrist gave a cry of remonstrance. 
“ No,” she said, “ things do not happen like 
that.” She began to tremble; she felt she was 
going to say something that had been buried in 
her for a long time, that something in her was 
going beyond her. A hidden quality that the 
fineness in Peter had set at liberty. She, the 
conventional, was going to tear away conven¬ 
tionality, and she felt like a young girl to whom 
life is just opening her doors. She felt happy, 
wildly, wildly happy, as though this thing that 
was rising to her lips would give her a new 
youth and happiness. 

“ You must believe. You must believe. 
God exists. He is merciful. He forgives. 
What we deserve to be punished for He for¬ 
gives. Things do not happen like that.” 

“ I don’t think so,” Peter said slowly. “ He 
is hard on the people who try to do the decent 
thing. I have tried. It is all right. One is 


274 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 
game. But it is rotten to look up and be struck 
in the face.” 

Lady Gilchrist was watching Peter, yearn¬ 
ing to put out the misery in him. The tears 
stole up and silently rolled down her cheeks. 
She thought of him and of herself and the 
strange thing that lay between them, and of 
how queer it was that the same thing should 
affect them both so differently. And deep 
down in her consciousness Mary Gilchrist 
heard a voice cry, “ God exists! God exists! 
Everything He brings at last into the light of 
His sun.” It was a voice that she had never 
heard before, strong and tender with a note in 
it to overwhelm its possessor. In after years 
when she looked back at that moment she re¬ 
membered that she felt the strength and pas¬ 
sion of it so violently that she herself, every¬ 
thing became insignificant except these words 
that were ringing in her inmost being, forcing 
her to an action that she had never intended. 
She rose to her feet. Her white face was very 
grave, almost stern, like the face of one who 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 275 

makes a momentous decision. An overwhelm¬ 
ing desire to postpone things a little longer 
had taken hold of her, but nothing would si¬ 
lence this voice in her. If she went away leav¬ 
ing Peter like this, in allowing him to believe 
a lie, she would be blotting out his idea of God. 
The voice in her was too strong. It could not 
be denied* “ There is only one way I can 
think of,” she said to herself, “ and to take it 
I shall have to tell the truth.” She went to¬ 
ward Peter and stood beside him. 

“ I am your mother, Peter,” she said. 

The voice had won. The bells rang out in 
her, they clanged through her being and made 
her feel young, young, young. Young and 
happy like she had been when she was a girl. 

And Peter, he did not question the truth of 
it. With a cry he sank to his knees and put¬ 
ting his arms about her the tears that had 
welled up in his eyes rolled down his cheeks. 

“ This is better than anything I have 
known,” he stammered. “ I have never dreamt 
of anything like this.” 


CHAPTER XXXI 


For some moments Peter and Lady Gil¬ 
christ clung to each other, feeling both of them 
as if nothing could ever touch them again, as 
if the world and life and time were flowing 
away from them leaving them alone with their 
joy. And then conventionality crept back to 
Mary Gilchrist. Peter felt her stiffen in his 
arms; he got up and she went back to her chair. 

“ Sit down, Peter,” she said, “ and I will tell 
you the story.” 

Peter moved a chair and sat down beside 
her; he put his hand on the table and he felt her 
fingers stroking it, as if begging him to let 
things be her way. 

“ Gilly Collins and I fell in love,” she re¬ 
peated. “ My brother, of course, was furious. 
I felt bitterly, I remember, at the cold, insult¬ 
ing language that he used. I was spoiled. In 

everything I had always had my way, and sud- 
276 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 277 
denly Gilly Collins in the enthusiasm of youth 
crossed over into my land and I wanted him. 
He w r as so bonnie. I can see him now, my 
dear. He was nothing to be ashamed of then. 
This new thought so possessed me that I could 
think of nothing else. I wanted him to hold 
me, to absorb me, to carry me away. I re¬ 
member the night I got a note that at nine 
o’clock he would be waiting at the foot of the 
garden. I was at home with my mother and 
eldest brother. He had come to the village 
and was staying at the Inn. He bribed the 
housemaid to give me the note. At dinner I 
was so excited I could not eat. * Mary,’ my 
mother said, ‘you are eating nothing, child. 
Eat your dinner.’ And my brother retaliated, 
‘ Our sister Mary thinks she is in love.’ I re¬ 
member thinking of them both with scorn as 
effigies that the real things of life were passing 
by. After dinner my mother and brother al¬ 
ways played picquet and I waited until they 
had begun their game to slip out of the French 
window down the steps to the foot of the gar- 


278 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

den. I shall never forget how my heart beat 
as he took me in his arms. ‘ I want you, 
Mary/ he said. * We must run away/ I went 
with him. We took the midnight train for 
London and were married next day. I had 
always been brought up with every luxury. I 
thought things would always come when one 
wanted them. I did not know that there was 
such a thing as money, or that one had to pay. 
We took lodgings in London and for a few 
weeks I was very happy. We used to buy 
mushrooms at the market and bring them home 
for our landlady to cook. And strawberries 
and little brown pots of yellow cream. It was 
all like a game to me. A happy game in a 
dream. Those few weeks Gilly Collins never 
showed his other side. He was just gay and 
loving and sweet. And then my brother found 
us and Gilly showed his hand to my brother at 
the interview. How ashamed I was of him. 
‘ I have married your sister; you will have to 
settle something on us. I have no means to 
support her. She married me with her eyes 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 279 


open; she must have known that.’ Oh, the 
scenes, Peter, my brother, my mothex% and 
Gilly! At last I cursed the day that I had 
ever seen him. I went home and through my 
brother’s influence and the fact that we were 
neither of us of age when we married, the mar¬ 
riage was annulled. A few months later in a 
little village not far from Dinard you were 
born. I wanted to keep you. My brother said 
no. The marriage had been hushed up. No 
one knew of it. My brother said I had better 
bury the whole incident. He was strong 
willed. My mother did just as he suggested. 
I was only eighteen and together they bore 
down my judgment and I gave you up. I was 
assured you would be well looked after, put 
through college, given a generous allowance 
and given every chance.” 

Peter moved slightly and Mary Gilchrist’s 
fingers closed over his hand. 

“ I was bound by them never to see you, or 
reveal myself to you in any way. Otherwise 
my brother reserved the right to stop your al- 


280 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

lowance. I myself saw Na-Na and gave you 
into her hands. I knew that your name was 
Peter Magdalen. Gilly Collins was at Mag¬ 
dalen College. I did not like the name of 
Collins and I wanted you to be called Peter. I 
felt it stood for strength and goodness. Only 
once in all the years did I see you. We were 
at Dinard and I motored past what on inquiry 
I was told was Na-Na’s cottage. You were 
playing with a brown dog and as the motor 
passed slowly, you looked up at me as if you 
knew someone belonging to you was passing 
by.” 

Peter turned his hand and took her fingers 
in its strong grasp. 

“ When I was twenty I married Sir Jocelyn 
Gilchrist. I know my brother told him some¬ 
thing, but how much I am not sure. Three 
years later my elder brother died and all these 
years I have lived in terror that my husband 
should find out I was hiding something from 
him. You see I don’t know how much he was 
told. Whether really he was told the facts. 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 281 
My husband has a curious nature. Only two 
years ago a race horse of his lost a very im¬ 
portant race. There was every reason why he 
should have won. Jocelyn had him shot. That 
terrified me. I felt that more than ever I must 
take no chance. I am fond of Jocelyn, Peter,” 
the hand holding Peter’s pressed his as if to 
insist on having its way. “ He has become my 
life. He has become my habit, as I have be¬ 
come his. His house, the security of his posi¬ 
tion, the life he leads, the friends we both have 
together are my place in the world. And I 
dare not, when I think of the race horse, give 
him the chance of going back on me. I dare 
not risk it,” she added; “ he might do it.” 

“ It will be all right,” said Peter softly. 
“ You mustn’t worry.” 

Lady Gilchrist was touching her lips with 
her handkerchief. She recovered herself. 

“ Ever since I saw you and knew you were 
my boy I have thought how wonderful it would 
be to claim you, to care for you, watch over 
you, defend you, laugh at your youth, to be 


282 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 


a mother to you openly, Peter. I have lain 
awake at night and thought of it, but I don’t 
dare because I don’t know how Jossy would 
take it, and Jossy has a part of me because we 
are so accustomed to each other.” She had a 
fear that Peter would cry; he seemed so over¬ 
wrought and still, sitting there saying nothing. 
She felt the cold, heavy oppression at his heart. 
Peter felt her trembling all over. He got up 
and walked to the window. Lady Gilchrist’s 
voice followed him. 

“ I have told you this because I felt life was 
hurting you and I could not bear it, but I—I 
don’t know whether I have the courage, 
whether I dare tell Jossy. You must not 
blame me if I have not got the maternal in¬ 
stinct.” 

Peter turned and faced her. His mouth 
was set severely, his legs apart, his hands at 
his sides. 

“ It would only make matters worse,” he 
said. “ It is enough for me to know. I am— 
quite content. You must go back. There 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 233 


must be no fuss. What good could it possibly 
do? You can’t tell him; that is absurd. You 
have been here a long time. Perhaps you 
ought to go now, but come back to-morrow or 
the next day when we are more ourselves.” 

“ Come here,” said Lady Gilchrist. Slowly 
Peter came. He knelt beside her and she took 
his face between her hands and looked into it a 
long time. “We are in the hands of God,” 
she said. 

“ I shall always bless you for telling me,” 
said Peter. “ It means you trust me. I think 
that that was what I wanted. It makes me 
feel, too, that there is something back of it all, 
something bigger than we are. We all need 
to feel that. Whenever you think of me,” 
Peter said, “ remember there is one person in 
the world who would let himself be cut to 
pieces for you.” 

Peter knelt there for a moment looking at 
her. And in his eyes she read what all the 
years she had missed. 


CHAPTER XXXII 


The lights were silvering the gloom of the 
river, the lamps had sprung out of the day, 
when Peter collected himself sufficiently to go 
out and take a little air. He made his way to 
the Seine and half lay on an empty bench near 
the Embankment to think over the events of 
the day. The events of the day came up out 
of the twilight to look at him. He had buried 
his father; a man who one month ago he had 
not known to be his father. He had returned 
to his father’s office and had found his mother. 
A strange adventure for a grown man. He 
sat in silence and tried to settle the vagaries of 
his fate. 

Briefly, facts evolved themselves to this. He 
had found his mother. She was more than he 
could have dreamed and yet his feeling was not 

one of perfect, undying happiness. To him- 
284 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 285 
self alone on the bench he admitted he had been 
half in love with Lady Gilchrist. To know 
that she was his mother was wonderful, but to 
his surprise it did not give him the relief that 
his heart wanted so badly. All the time he felt 
Sir Jocelyn came before him and he was jeal¬ 
ous with a dumb vague jealousy. 

His heart to his own surprise was unsatis¬ 
fied; it was still sore to breaking point; he was 
sick with longing and deep angry wonder that, 
although he had found his mother, with her he 
did not come first. 

Thinking over events, something reminded 
him of Daphne and he realized what a cad she 
must think him, and suddenly in imagination 
he saw her before him, tall, thin, slightly angu¬ 
lar, her shoulders drooping girlishly, her man¬ 
ner a little awkward. Her warm soft face, her 
misty eyes and her hair curling in soft masses 
about her forehead, Peter saw her and stretch¬ 
ing out his hand to the air said half aloud, 
“ You can save me from myself.” 

Behind him under a cloudy sky floated 


286 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

Paris, like a great illuminated barge on a mod¬ 
ern sea. The whole magic and wonder of the 
City was in the air. Before him was the long 
low dip of the Seine. 

As Peter sat ruminating on one of the old 
problems of life, it occurred to him that the 
love he had felt in his childhood for his im¬ 
agined mother had lately boiled over into love 
for Lady Gilchrist. It was like peering into 
some old picture; he could see that the black¬ 
ness resolved itself first into a love for Lady 
Gilchrist, and against this background, which 
was a background of storm and self-repression, 
was the vision of Daphne and the thought that 
in the end her likeness to the real vision, the 
possibility of her realization in that he might 
attain her would at the last clarify him. He 
thought that in the end Daphne might go to 
those dark places that are within the soul and 
from their depths bring at last a meaning 
which would not be mere conjecture. Yet even 
as he sat and searched his mind, he knew that 
the consciousness of Lady Gilchrist had 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 287 


not left him and might not leave him yet 
awhile. 

Sitting by the Seine the stagnant stream of 
many emotions thinking of Paris, its charm, 
its setting, Peter wondered how many men 
have come without some sharp jolt from the 
love of the Madonna to the love of the Be¬ 
loved, the love of protection and sympathy and 
tenderness, to the more stormy love of the 
bee’s song in the clover and the wild roses sway¬ 
ing in the breeze. 

Behind Peter lay the ambiguous quarters 
and then the rising Butte and the landmarks 
of Montmartre, the city, the municipality 
which is in itself nothing by day, but which, 
more than any environment in the world, at 
night gives one the thought that men are daily 
content to starve there for a dream. Peter 
arose, and preparing to go on his way, he set¬ 
tled his hat on his head and picked up his cane. 
To the world he must behave as usual. He 
was sorry now he had been so hasty in send¬ 
ing in his resignation. Perhaps he could see 


288 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

his chief and, although it had been accepted 
with a formal note of surprise, have it re¬ 
considered. He had had a dream and un¬ 
like most men he had found it. One way or 
another he must forget that the realization was 
not exactly as he craved. He had found his 
mother, but he could tell no one who she was. 
He had wanted her to be a refuge. The refuge 
he must conceal. The moments said to him, 
“ Tell us what we lack for you.” And Peter 
answered, “ Possession. We love the things 
that are ours, the things that we give our lives 
for. A man cannot be stripped of the joy of 
ownership. Rum thing life,” he said, turning 
on the bench because the seat was hard. 

That evening he went to dine at the Restau¬ 
rant Noel Peters. “ I am a boy to be so un¬ 
grateful,” he said, sipping his port. “ C’est 
inoui. C’est inoui! ” It was only in the gray 
night that his heart sank. The next day he 
was proud and grateful. At night he had 
thought, “ Soon she will go away and leave 
me perhaps forever.” And in the morning he 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 289 


was proud and joyful that she was coming 
again that afternoon. The sunbeams had 
stolen down the stones of the old building and 
it was day. And it was Paris and Peter was 
young. 

When Lady Gilchrist came into the little 
shop that afternoon the incongruous contrast 
between her and the environment struck Peter. 
She had charm, cleverness, rank, position and 
money. She knew all her advantages and she 
did not want to lose them. Again Peter mar¬ 
velled at the contrast between his mother and 
his father. Since yesterday Lady Gilchrist 
had been pondering deeply over her ad¬ 
vantages. 

“ My mother,” said Peter huskily, when she 
came in. “ My beautiful mother.” His show 
of emotion frightened Lady Gilchrist. Again 
she thought of her advantages. What would 
he demand? She came to him hardened by 
second thoughts, those calculating reserves 
which one brings up when enthusiasm is cold. 
The absurdly sentimental emotional fit of yes- 


290 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

terday had passed, of course. It could not con¬ 
tinue except in a mushy, weak individual. The 
world was the world. Life was life. But the 
emotional mood had left its mark; she was more 
prone to be attacked again. And Peter was 
Peter. A man of impulse utterly devoid of 
calculating second thoughts. Lady Gilchrist 
wished to be strictly reasonable, to see the sit¬ 
uation exactly as it was. Peter had got on so 
far very well without her. Yesterday she had 
been carried away by his apparent miserable 
realization of himself as Gilly Collins’s son. 
The long-accustomed woman of the world said 
to herself, “ By keeping my position, by pull¬ 
ing wires to advance his career, I can do far 
more for him than if at this late date I had a 
scene with Jossy,” and then the thought, “ I 
am not sure of Jossy. I don’t know what he 
would do. I dare not have a scene.” 

Underneath all her assurance there was a 
certain diffidence of which she had been con¬ 
scious all her life. At that moment she prob¬ 
ably exaggerated in her mind the effect of the 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 291 
disclosure of this piece of news on Sir Jocelyn, 
And so in the dead watches of the night when 
she realized she had “ given herself away ” to 
Peter, she was filled with anger at her own 
impetuosity. Habits, manners of life, friends 
were formed. It was too late to change; she 
could not make a clean breast of things and 
give them up. Above all she was afraid of 
Jossy. But beyond all these reasonings Lady 
Gilchrist was surprised at herself, surprised at 
the odd sense of romance she felt at being 
Peter’s mother, surprised at the peace-giving 
touch of happiness it gave to her inmost being. 
“ Dear Peter, he was a son to be proud of.” 
The bit of black road which Lady Gilchrist 
had thought of had not been so bad as she ex¬ 
pected. She had touched the worst. She could 
depend on Peter. She need never be so fearful 
again. Away from Peter last night there had 
been moments when she resented him, resented 
the power he had over her to make her do such 
an unpremeditated thing as she had done yes¬ 
terday, but back in his presence those thoughts 


292 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 


could not continue; one could not resent any¬ 
one so magnificent, so honest, so winning, par¬ 
ticularly if he were one’s own son. 

“ Dear Peter,” she said, and as she looked 
at him a feeling of tenderness swept over her. 
Was it the sense of motherhood stirring in her 
at last? Long ago when she had first seen his 
little downy head lying on the pillow she re¬ 
membered feeling like this. And then she had 
denied him, given him up. She, Mary Gilchrist, 
had given up her own son and had allowed life 
to come to him as it would. Mothers, loving 
mothers, try to shape their children’s destiny. 
They say, “ Look, life is like this, on such an 
occasion you must do so-and-so. Your 
thoughts of women must be such-and-such. 
And first and last there is God Almighty.” 
She, Mary Gilchrist, had denied her own son. 
And when later on in life by accident she 
found him, even she, hour by hour could not 
have molded him more to her liking. He was 
Peter—brave and comely—and chivalrous. 
Away from him she clung to the things she 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 293 
knew, the things that are, the things the world 
holds much to. In a way that Mary Gilchrist 
had never surrendered to anyone, all her life 
she surrendered to her son Peter. And it was 
in a manner quite different to her surrender 
to Sir Jocelyn. Sir Jocelyn she was afraid of; 
she did not know always how he would act. 
She loved him, a little fearfully, with a catch 
in her voice, but of Peter whom she had 
wronged so deeply she had no fear. She had 
perfect trust in him, perfect confidence. She 
was like a storm-tossed ship seeking anchorage 
that had at last found rest. With Peter there 
was peace. She could tell him all her weak¬ 
nesses, all her failings, and he would answer, 
“ Yes, it is all right. One is game.” Lady 
Gilchrist sank again into the chair by the desk. 

“ Dear Peter,” she repeated out loud. 

Peter turned smilingly to her. “ I have been 
thinking things over,” he said. “ Pere Formol 
used to say to flatter me that he saw the artist, 
the dreamer in me. Negatively he may have 
been right. At any rate I want you to know 


294 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

that I have been thinking things over—what 
you told me—your life and my life. And I 
want you to know that I think it is best we 
cover it all up. Perhaps in life I may be lucky 
enough to meet you sometimes, but it will be 
enough for both of us, you and I—to know that 
the other is there. You mustn’t give yourself 
any anxious thoughts or call yourself down 
about it. It is as I would wish it, that we tell 
nothing. Whatever you did I would never 
criticize you, or turn against you on account of 
it.” 

“ But Peter,” said Lady Gilchrist, “ ever 
since yesterday I have realized events come 
back in life, they are like ghosts that will not 
rest. They return to us and they say, 4 justify 
us, that we may lie down and rest.’ I realize 
that we can’t bury any action of ours until we 
bury ourselves. Time and again, Peter, I have 
thanked God that my marriage to Gilly Col¬ 
lins was annulled, hidden, covered, that you 
were lost to me, that nothing was known. In 
my hysterical moments I have looked at Jossy 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 295 


and I have prayed God, Peter, I have said if 
God would only keep this one thing from Jossy 
I would serve Him faithfully in every other 
way. That is why you must never doubt God, 
Peter. He hears us when we cry. All these 
years He has covered up my sin.” 

Lady Gilchrist stopped. It seemed to her 
overwrought nerves that nothing of all this was 
real, that it was a dream with a strange scene 
set on some lonely moor, that she was stum¬ 
bling through bracken and thorns, that the 
thorns were tearing her tender flesh, but that 
presently she would be safe, presently would 
shine out through the darkness the candle in 
the house of safety. With something of a 
shiver she turned and looked at Peter, but 
Peter was basking again in the warm fra¬ 
grance of her presence, drawing from her 
some sunbeam of tenderness for his starved 
heart. That look of love, that look as of a 
flower that opens when the sun is high, flick¬ 
ered through to Mary Gilchrist’s conscious¬ 


ness. 


290 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

“ Peter,” she said brokenly, “ come here.” 
It seemed the words caught chokingly in her 
throat. 

Almost without consciousness Peter came 
and knelt on one knee beside her. 

Mary Gilchrist’s wide eyes looked at him. 
“ There are some selfish things one can do, my 
dear,” she said. “ And there are some selfish 
things one cannot, because the people against 
which one would do them are too fine to let 
you.” 

Peter was conscious of the flaming color of 
her face, of the sudden stiffening of her body. 

“ I cannot deny you,” she blurted out. “ I 
cannot deny you, Peter.” 

Then she began to sob. 

Peter rose with panic and stood and looked 
down on her. 

“ Mother,” he said softly. The name on his 
lips gave him courage. “ Mother mine, you 
must. What would we gain if now, through 
me, you were to lose your house, your garden, 
the little daily habits you’ve learned to love? 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 297 

I never thought about them until yesterday, 
but I thought of them all night, and I realize 
what a force habit is. Habits are like the 
sounds of a brook flowing over smooth stones. 
To break them is like putting one moment to 
break all the moments of a lifetime, one voice 
to drown all the voices. It cannot be.” 

Soothed by the sound of his voice, Lady Gil¬ 
christ’s sobbing stopped. 

Peter gave her a look and allowed himself 
the shadow of a smile. 

“ It can’t be; we have found each other. 
You are a mother a man would dream of, but 
like a dream you must go.” 

“ No,” she answered slowly, “ I won’t go. 
As I said, there are things one does, and there 
are things one doesn’t do. I shall tell Jossy 
you are my son, and I shall not be ashamed, but 
I shall be proud of you.” 

“ You must not,” said Peter; “ it would be 
madness.” 

Just then out in the corridor they heard 
voices. Not voices of those who walk through 


298 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 
and pass on up-stairs, but the voices seemed to 
come from outside the door and to be stand¬ 
ing there. Involuntarily Lady Gilchrist and 
Peter looked toward the door. There was a 
slight knock and then the handle turned; the 
door opened partly and revealed Na-Na, who 
was evidently protesting to Sir Jocelyn Gil¬ 
christ. 

At the sight of the occupants of the office, 
Sir Jocelyn bit his lip. As he came forward 
he may have noticed Lady Gilchrist seemed 
disturbed, because a moment later he was 
standing beside his wife as if to protect her, 
facing Peter who had moved away. And yet 
it was Peter who spoke the first words. He, 
oddly enough, did not say “ How-do-you-do/’ 
In his perturbation he forgot, although Sir 
Jocelyn noticed it. What Peter said was an 
explanation. It took the onus of the situation 
on his own shoulders. It smoothed the bit of 
road for Lady Gilchrist and pointed the way 
for her gently. His words were: 

“ I had the pleasure of meeting Lady Gil- 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 299 
christ. She heard I had lost my father and 
she came to pay me a visit of sympathy.” 

Peter’s eyes again took refuge in the shad¬ 
ows on the wall. 

From outside came the murmur of the life 
of Paris. 


CHAPTER XXXIII 

A silence fell among the three. Peter con¬ 
tinued staring into the shadows. Sir Jocelyn 
stood beside his wife as if to protect her from 
him, and in Lady Gilchrist’s heart conflicting 
emotions battled with each other. If she put 
the facts to Jossy what would he say? Jossy 
was jealous and he was queer. She asked her¬ 
self the question, but to ask it was not to an¬ 
swer it. Still she could hear the voice in her¬ 
self saying, “ There is only one thing to be 
done. In all the years, the tripping years, if 
you keep silent now you will wish for one thing 
only, that you may have this moment back 
again that you may speak.” Thus the voice 
whispered to her. She shut her heart. She 
tossed her head and looked up, but as she 
looked up her eyes fell on Peter. She had done 
some wrong things in her life, but a certain 

kind of wrong thing she had never done. She 
300 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 301 
had never since she had been twenty-one been 
a craven coward. Peter’s expression killed the 
thought shown in the tossing of her head. 
“ Jossy, dear,” she said a little breathlessly, 
“ I did not tell you I was coming; how did you 
come to find me here? ” 

Sir Jocelyn started. “ Why, as a matter of 
fact, Mary, I did not know you were here. I 
heard Pere Formol was something of an al¬ 
chemist. That he had the idea of the Middle 
Ages of turning lead into gold. I came to see 
if he had left anything I might buy.” 

“ Turning lead into gold,” she repeated bit¬ 
terly. “ Sir Jocelyn the horse fancier turned 
art collector.” 

Both Peter and Sir Jocelyn looked toward 
her, amazed at the bitterness in her voice. 

Again Peter jumped into the breach. 

“ It was Lady Gilchrist’s kindness that 
brought her here. Pere Formol was my fa¬ 
ther.” 

“ Ah,” said Sir Jocelyn, as if somehow the 
ejaculation escaped from his lips. And this 


302 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 
time Peter and Lady Gilchrist looked at 
him. 

“ Funny, Jossy,” said Lady Gilchrist, using 
a bantering tone, “ you came here to buy gold 
made out of lead. Well, your visit is oppor¬ 
tune. I have something I want to tell you.” 

“ Lady Gilchrist is upset, sir,” interrupted 
Peter in an effort to stop her. “ It is my fault. 
I have been a young ass. I’ve worked on her 
feelings, told her gruesome things about his 
death. They’ve upset her. If you take her 
home, sir, she will soon be feeling better—out 
of this,” Peter added. He had the same des¬ 
perate look he had in his face the day he begged 
Sir Jocelyn to go with him to see the race. 

Lady Gilchrist paid no attention to Peter’s 
words. “ Sit down, Jossy,” she said; “ I have 
something I want to tell you.” 

Sir Jocelyn with his hat and stick in his hand 
sat down on a stool he found near the writing 
desk. 

“ It is something that happened long ago, 
Jossy, before I met you. It was Freddy’s 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 303 


third year at Oxford, I went to the boat race. 
I met there Pere Formol; his English name 
was Gilly Collins. We fell in love. We ran 
away. We married. He was twenty, I was 
seventeen. Phillip came after us. He said 
we were neither of us of age and persuaded my 
mother to make me have the marriage an¬ 
nulled. It was annulled, but after some months 
my baby was born. Peter over there was my 
baby, Jossy. He is my son.” 

When she had said all this Mary Gilchrist 
sat staring at her husband waiting for him to 
reply. Peter noticed that the diamond pen¬ 
dant on her breast flashed as it rose and fell 
rapidly. 

Lady Gilchrist continued looking at Sir 
Jocelyn, plucking at the folds of her skirt. 
She felt very anxious. She had thrown the 
dice. 

“ Did you hear, Jossy? ” she asked pres¬ 
ently, feeling sick with anxiety. 

“ I was always afraid you might hear it. I 
wanted to tell you and yet I didn’t dare. I am 


304 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 


fond of you and we have grown so used to 
each other, like two boughs that are ground 
together in a storm. Still, before you came in 
I had made up my mind. The truth is 
stronger than we are; it forces itself out of us. 
Before you came in I had made up my mind 
to tell you. That is all, Jossy; what do you 
say? ” 

Stiffly, with his hat and cane in his right 
hand, Sir Jocelyn sat on the stool; even Peter’s 
eyes were drawn from the shadows to look at 
him. The thought of confession had always 
frightened Lady Gilchrist, and now she be¬ 
gan to feel almost panic stricken that she had 
told. And she began to wonder exactly how 
much she understood of her husband, how 
much she could reckon that after what she had 
told him he would stand by her. 

Still Sir Jocelyn sat stiffly, his face like a 
mask. 

“ Say something, speak, for heaven’s sake! ” 
she cried. 

Sir Jocelyn’s face looked unusually stern 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 305 

and it was a little redder than usual. He rose 
and again stood by her side. 

“ This is not news to me, Mary,” he said. 
“ I have always known it. Phillip told me the 
story before I married you.” 

“ You knew! ” 

“ Yes. But I made up my mind, until you 
told me of your own accord, I wouldn’t bother 
you. When I told you I came here to-day to 
see whether Pere Formol had left anything I 
might fancy to buy, I was not strictly speaking 
the truth.” 

Sir Jocelyn heard Lady Gilchrist give a lit¬ 
tle sigh. He did not wait but continued: 

“ I must tell you I came because when I 
quite unexpectedly read you the fact of his 
death out of the paper I noticed you were up¬ 
set by it, and for the last two days you have 
been so nervous, so absent-minded, that I 
thought something was worrying you. I made 
up my mind if there was anything in this situa¬ 
tion to upset you, I would find it out, and give 
you assistance if it were needed. I did not 


306 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

know until now Pere Formol was your hus¬ 
band. You see, I thought his name was Col¬ 
lins. I am a staid comrade, Mary, but I stand 
by you.” 

Lady Gilchrist’s face had looked down with 
an anxiety that was like agony. 

“ You do? ” she said, as if startled. “ I have 
told you everything. At last I have kept noth¬ 
ing back, and you still stand by me? ” 

“ Of course,” said Sir Jocelyn. “ You were 
just a girl. You found out your mistake. I 
couldn’t blame you.” 

“ Not that,” said Lady Gilchrist quickly, 
“ but the fact that all these years I have kept 
something from you, something very vital to 
you. Can you forgive me that? ” 

“ Yes,” he said. “ I knew your mother. I 
understood her worldly strain. I knew she had 
bound you not to tell.” His face was stern, 
but there was a steady faithfulness in his eyes. 

“ Do you mean-” 

Sir Jocelyn looked at her. For the moment 
they both had forgotten Peter. 



THAT WHICH IS PASSED 307 

“ What? ” he asked. 

“ You know and you forgive me? ” 

Sir Jocelyn nodded. 

“Oh, the misery I have had! The fear 
you might find out? Why didn’t you tell me 
you knew? ” 

“ Because, my dear, that isn’t my way.” 

The fact that Peter was there curbed any 
expression and touched his natural sense of 
being reserved, but Lady Gilchrist knew him; 
she knew him well enough to know that from 
this that she had dreaded so long she had noth¬ 
ing to fear, and the sense of relief was so 
strong that she began to sob and could not re¬ 
strain herself. 

“ You mustn’t, Mary, really, you mustn’t,” 
said Sir Jocelyn, patting her shoulder a little 
stiffly. If Peter had comforted her, if Peter 
had entered into the explanation, Sir Jocelyn 
would have resented it in the extreme. He 
might even have silenced him, he would cer¬ 
tainly have thought it officious, but during the 
explanation Peter had stood awkwardly shift- 


308 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 
mg his weight from one foot to the other, look¬ 
ing into the shadows and listening to the sound 
of the rain that had begun to fall outside, the 
sound of great swollen drops beating upon the 
pavement. He listened. He stayed where he 
was because he did not know how very well to 
get out, but from the moment that he had 
failed to stop Lady Gilchrist from telling her 
husband the truth the scene had lost interest 
for him. The centre of its interest had shifted 
to Sir Jocelyn and to Lady Gilchrist’s appear¬ 
ance in Sir Jocelyn’s eyes. Peter listened to 
the sound of their voices mingling with the 
sound of the drops of the rain. All of it was 
outside him, apart. He knew that presently 
they would say good-bye and go away to¬ 
gether and he would be left alone. He would 
look down the street at the rain beating in lit¬ 
tle puddles and they would be gone. And 
funnily enough and without reason, as Peter 
stood there he had for a moment an absurd 
sympathy for the dead man. Peter had often 
heard him say “ art and humanity have noth- 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 309 
ing to do with each other.” And again on 
some evenings when he had been wont to ram¬ 
ble, he had said “ art is the sea, humanity is 
the shore. A man sets out in his little boat 
and once out, once well away, there is a strange 
current that bears him, he can never get back.” 
He had gone on to say that to have the neces¬ 
sary point of view the artist must be out there, 
away from humanity. The human things; the 
wife watching at the gate for her husband to 
come home, the mother putting her boy's slip¬ 
pers to warm by the fire, preparing her daugh¬ 
ter's favorite dish for supper, are human com¬ 
forts beyond the artist. And in the evening 
the family, the father, mother, son and daugh¬ 
ter, branches of the human growth at home. 
These things the dead man did not have and 
he had failed to attain art. Peter shivered; he 
tried to bring himself back to the moment, but 
strangely, for the first time in his life, he saw 
Pere Formol's point of view. Something like 
a thrill, the thrill of sorrow for death, passed 
over him as he realized he was gone from this 


310 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

place, and that here in Pere Formol’s room 
Lady Gilchrist was finding that she could de¬ 
pend on Sir Jocelyn’s faithfulness. 

“ If the gods have a down on a man,” Pere 
Formol was wont to say, “ his luck never 
changes. He will be ‘ in wrong ’ until his last 
day.” A cynicism, but it certainly looked as if 
it were true. Life’s gifts have, as it were, their 
shady sides. Of life’s gifts, Pere Formol had 
known but the shady side. Was he warped, 
embittered, because he had no chance, or had 
he no chance because he was embittered? As 
he stood there, vaguely wondered Peter. The 
sound of steadily falling rain came into the 
room, and Peter stood there hearing Sir Joce¬ 
lyn reassure Lady Gilchrist, feeling a strange 
sympathy for the dead man whom in life he 
had despised. There was a weight upon his 
heart and he felt his feet were nailed to the 
floor. He knew, of course, that these two peo¬ 
ple before him were real, that they were not 
phantoms come in for refuge from the rain, 
but from the moment they had turned to each 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 311 
other they had ceased to be real to him. He 
was caught in the nimbus of the past three 
days. He was nailed to its blackness. And 
although he was glad old Formol was dead, 
he was sorry life hadn’t given him a better 
deal. Sorry and glad, light and shadow, rain¬ 
drops and sunshine, such was life. Peter stood 
ruminating. He was brought back to the pres¬ 
ent by the sound of his own name. The phan¬ 
toms had turned from each other and were 
looking at him. The ghosts had words for him; 
he recovered himself with a start. 

“ I want you to shake hands with Peter,” 
Lady Gilchrist had said. Stiffly Sir Jocelyn 
changed his hat and his cane from his right 
hand to his left. Lady Gilchrist looked at 
Peter; he hadn’t heard. She looked back at her 
husband and saw the hat and cane in his left 
hand. It was then she said, “ Peter! ” and he 
heard it. 

“ Yes,” he answered. The intense hopeless¬ 
ness of his voice made an impression on both 
his hearers. Sir Jocelyn took a half step for- 


312 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

ward. Lady Gilchrist went to Peter and 
touched his arm lightly. 

Sir Jocelyn’s red, weather-beaten face took 
on a darker hue. 

“ We’ve met before,” he said. “ First in 
London at the Club and then in Paris. I 
pointed him out to you, Mary, the morning we 
arrived in Paris. A young man swinging 
along in the fog of the Place de la Concorde.” 

“ You said his name,” said Lady Gilchrist. 
“ It set me wondering whether you knew that 
he was anything to me.” 

“ I knew,” answered Sir Jocelyn. “ I found 
his name out by accident. Some money was 
to be paid to him out of your mother’s estate. 
I am a trustee.” 

“ I remember the way you said it, ‘ That is 
Peter Magdalen.’ It thrilled me and it made 
me shiver, as if Paris held a secret of mine that 
she would give away. Where were you going 
to, Peter, at that hour? ” 

“ I was coming home from the Aero Club. 
I was coming back here.” A look of interest 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 313 
suddenly came into Peter’s face. “ That day 
at the race,” he spoke to Sir Jocelyn; “you 
knew I was her son? ” 

Sir Jocelyn was looking at Peter as though 
he were trying to read something in his face. 

“ What was your game? ” he asked sud¬ 
denly. “ I have wondered ever since.” 

“ I may as well tell you now. They told me 
at the Ritz that Pere Formol had just gone up 
to call on Lady Gilchrist. He had already 
threatened me there was something he could 
tell you. Just as I heard it I saw you come 
in the door. I thought he might make it un¬ 
pleasant for her—upset her. I tried to steer 
you off until she had got him to go away.” 

Suddenly Sir Jocelyn’s coldness died. He 
wanted to play up. Already he was holding 
out his hand. “ It was damned decent, damned 
decent. Now I will be able to show you my 
racing stable.” 

Involuntarily the constraint of the situation 
crept back again. And after some talking 
Lady Gilchrist realized that it would be better 


314 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 


for their future happiness and concord to¬ 
gether that she should take Sir Jocelyn away 
now and smooth him down, as one smooths 
a restive horse. 

“ I want my son to come to lunch with me 
to-morrow,” Lady Gilchrist said, as she bade 
Peter good-bye. 

“ Our son,” corrected Sir Jocelyn. 

Lady Gilchrist gave him a grateful look. 


CHAPTER XXXIV 


Passed the long days of autumn. 

Lady Gilchrist and Sir Jocelyn had gone 
back to England. They had stayed in Paris 
for a short time after Pere Formol’s death and 
then they had taken Peter with them on a 
motor trip, but before any rumor of Peter’s 
resignation from the Embassy had got about 
Sir Jocelyn had called upon Peter’s chief, and 
asked him to write him a letter saying that al¬ 
though his resignation had been accepted, he 
wished him to reconsider it. Lady Gilchrist 
insisted upon Peter going back. 

As Sir Jocelyn put it, Lady Gilchrist 
“ nodded over Peter.” Smilingly she accepted 
Sir Jocelyn’s chaffing. She had arranged that 
Peter was to come to them for his Christmas 
holidays and when she was with him she spoke 
to him of his home-coming. 

“ Suns of home,” quoted Peter, 

316 


316 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 


“ Yes, dear, suns of home.” 

And Peter back at his job looked out at the 
gay world and the glimmering autumn lights. 
It seemed to him that he had acted in a drama, 
that the scene had been prepared for him and 
that after all it had been but a prelude to the 
real part of his life. A great thing he might 
never do, but with the experiences he had had 
he might do a true thing and besides he knew 
better the language of life. 

The frost came and as Pere Formol’s laun¬ 
dress had foretold by the cards, “ Between the 
melting and the falling of the snow,” Pere 
Formol had gone. Madame Taneyre spoke 
of it to Madame Paul. “ It is strange,” said 
Madame Taneyre, recalling the prophecy, 
“ that she should have been right.” 

“ The laundress is Suisse,” said Madame 
Paul. “ She reckons between one snow and 
another. It is mere coincidence,” reaffirmed 
Madame Paul, the well established. Behind 
the steamy windows of the Cafe her lights were 
beginning to gleam with a new ambition. She 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 317 

planned to repair the flagstones in the court¬ 
yard at the rear. Madame Paul had bought 
the building, and as such, as the keeper of the 
Cafe, she was curiously distrustful of a man 
who did not sometimes drink a glass of cordial 
with his neighbors. “ He is better gone,” she 
said, thinking of Pere Formol. Such habits 
repaired no flagstones. As for Madame 
Taneyre’s position, one could not always be 
sure of the fish from “ Les Halles.” And if 
one were sure, clients were capricious. On the 
days when lobsters were plentiful, clients 
might not fancy them. The}' might even eat 
meat. “ Cuisson des homards tous les jours.” 
Madame Taneyre progressed, it is true, but 
her progress was more slow; as she thought of 
this and the passing of time, Madame Taneyre 
patted her postiche. 

The poor desolate days of autumn affected 
Bobby, the little Scotchman. The foul 
weather and the dripping boughs depressed 
him and he gave some parties, and at his parties 
were always Peter and Daphne. As a flowing 


318 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

stream autumn fled on, with Bobby’s parties 
bringing together Peter and Daphne. 

Bobby sighed and looked at them enviously 
and asked them again. The autumn breezes 
bore the scent of leaves dying on the ground. 
Bobby went quietly about his work at the of¬ 
fice. Daphne was thinking that the beginning 
of romance was a thing apart like a butterfly, 
now hovering, now darting away. Peter was 
alternately drawn to Daphne by her extraor¬ 
dinary likeness to Lady Gilchrist; he was al¬ 
ternately brightened by the charm of Daphne’s 
beauty and youth and caught back into the 
recollections of the events of the past summer. 
In the morning he went hopefully through the 
Tuilleries gardens and in the evening he came 
back to the gray street, chill and dreary, which 
had been the symbol of Pere Formol’s life. 

About this time Na-Na dictated a few lines 
to Lady Gilchrist, to the effect that the young 
master seemed quiet, too quiet. On receipt of 
this Lady Gilchrist longed for Christmas to 
come and redoubled her efforts to make every 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 319 


preparation for his welcome. So the autumn 
days passed, but through the days fluttered the 
butterfly between Peter and Daphne. The 
bright wings which awoke the longing for long¬ 
ing and the love of love. 


CHAPTER XXXV 


In the drawing-room at Burrow Court 
Lady Gilchrist was sitting. It was Christmas 
Eve and the great logs brought from the park 
were heaped in the fireplace in the hall and 
some smaller logs had been brought into the 
drawing-room and were spitting and cracking 
as they lay across the brass fire dogs. Out¬ 
side the wind pierced and the skies were gray, 
but inside all was sheltered and warm and 
bright. From a strip of wood on a hill a 
mile from the house, they had brought holly 
and mistletoe and evergreen. All morning 
Lady Gilchrist had been busy superintending 
the arrangements and for the moment, slightly 
tired by her exertions, she was sitting on the 
fire stool in front of the fire. Her cheek, 
partly to shield itself from the hot glow, rested 
on her hand. Her face was turned toward the 

door. Sir Jocelyn came to the door. He 
320 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 321 
looked at her steadily for a moment before she 
saw him, for her thoughts were far away, and 
as he looked at her he noticed that she smiled. 

“ Everything ready? ” he asked. 

Lady Gilchrist started slightly. “ Yes,” she 
nodded, “ everything. I have just been up to 
his room. I am sure he will like the new gun, 
Jocelyn. It looks a beauty.” Her voice was 
full and rich and a little husky, as always when 
she was moved. “ Has the rain stopped? ” 

“ Yes, but the garden rails are dripping, and 
the roof is wet.” 

“ It will soon dry off.” 

Lady Gilchrist got up from her seat and 
crossing over to him put her hand through her 

husband’s arm. “ I want you to-” she 

began. 

“ I know,” he interrupted. His warm dry 
fingers closed over hers. 

“ The very best holiday he has ever had,” she 
said, putting her thought into her husband’s 
mind. 

They stood together looking at the logs. 



322 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

“ Those are from the red pines,” Sir Jocelyn 
said. “They have quite an aromatic smell. 
Are they all coming by the same train? ” 

“ Yes, except Bobby, Peter’s friend. At the 
last he couldn’t come. He has taken Peter’s 
place.” 

For a moment they stood looking into the 
room with its chintz-covered chairs, its crack¬ 
ling fire, then Sir Jocelyn went to attend to 
something that he had forgotten. 

Lady Boscawen and Daphne and Peter ar¬ 
rived from London by the same train. The 
other guests, Sir Jocelyn’s sister and her hus¬ 
band, came later. When the motor with Peter 
and Lady Boscawen drew up at the steps, Sir 
Jocelyn and Lady Gilchrist were at the door 
to welcome them. Sir Jocelyn ran down to 
help Lady Boscawen; she was the first to 
alight, then Daphne and last Peter. When she 
saw Peter Lady Gilchrist ran down under the 
dripping rain. 

“ My boy,” she said to him while the others 
were shaking hands, “ home at last! ” 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 328 

The mud-spattered motor pulled away and 
the hall door closed on Sir Jocelyn and Lady 
Gilchrist’s Christmas guests. 

“ Jocelyn,” said Ann Boscawen to her host, 
“ there is a juxtaposition of two remarkable 
constellations. You and I meet again. How 
lovely Burrow is! ” she exclaimed. “ What a 
lot you have done to it since I was here be¬ 
fore.” She bit her lip, as if a thought struck 
her. “ Of course you’ve had time. Daphne 
was only a baby then; it must be twenty 
years.” 

Sir Jocelyn looked at his guest whimsically. 
He had not wanted to have her but his wife 
had borne him down with the argument: 

“ She has been kind to Peter all this autumn. 
And Daphne is Peter’s friend. We can’t sep¬ 
arate them at Christmas.” 

Ann Boscawen had flashed a glance at him 
and for all that she was his guest, Sir J ocelyn 
replied in kind. 

“ You ought to have had a house like this 
yourself, Ann, if you had run in the traces, 


324 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

you and Percy. You would have liked it bet¬ 
ter, really, than the gypsy life you live. There 
is nothing like a place in the country of one’s 
own. The trees that spread their branches 
year by year, the field that one buys from one’s 
neighbor and adds to another field, the slow 
progression of the man of the land. It has 
undoubtedly its points.” 

“ Yes,” answered Ann Boscawen flippantly, 
“ but I have become a symbol of the age. The 
life I live I have carved for myself. It is 
therefore best for me.” 

“ Perhaps that explains it,” answered Sir 
Jocelyn, shutting himself up again in his box; 
“ but what of Daphne? ” he asked. 

“ Ah, Daphne,” said Lady Boscawen, “ she 
is mad about the country.” 

Daphne came in at that moment. She wore 
a tweed skirt, strong brown shoes, a light 
blouse and a soft brown suede hat pulled over 
her dark hair. She had taken off her coat in 
the hall. She bent impulsively to kiss her 
mother’s ear. 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 325 

“ Isn’t it lovely to be here. Mother? ” she 
said. That remark and her likeness to his wife 
won Sir Jocelyn to her. 

And then came Peter with his mother’s hand 
on his arm. 

For all its heterogeneity the party enjoyed 
itself at tea. Sir Jocelyn’s sister arrived in the 
midst of it with her husband, a retired colonel. 
Mrs. Forester was absurdly like her brother, 
Sir Jocelyn, but one might say a timid like¬ 
ness. Her features were not so strong, her 
face not quite so red. Still her resemblance to 
him seemed to make her less strange. 

Colonel Forester was exceedingly useful in 
passing cups. Indeed his knowledge of when 
a cup at the other side of the room was empty 
was almost uncanny. 

“ Colonel Forester,” said Ann Boscawen, 
“ is a clairvoyant. He sees from afar that my 
cup is empty and my thirst unquenched.” She 
handed him her cup with a smile. 

“ England,” said Daphne, catching Peter’s 


eye. 


326 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

“ Yes,” answered Peter, “ ripping old Eng¬ 
land.” 

After tea, up the main staircase, round the 
gallery with its little balconies, Lady Gilchrist 
took Peter to his rooms. They consisted of a 
bedroom, a bathroom, and a room in a turret, 
with windows looking out across the meadows 
to a great cup in the hills. 

As Lady Gilchrist opened the casement win¬ 
dow to show Peter the view the young moon, 
which had been hidden, rode out upon the 
clouds like some triumphant charger bearing 
forth with great good news. Peter saw Bur¬ 
row, its meadows and its woods. Down the 
long drive he could see the high gates still 
stood open and lights twinkled in the windows 
of the lodge. Beyond the black green turf was 
a pond and beyond the pond the red pines 
made a Gothic line against the sky. Peter 
stooped and looked to the meadows at the right 
of the pines that led away to the cup in the 
hills, and in fancy he climbed the hill and stood 
looking down on more desolate, wilder fields 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 827 

beyond. Already to the left the village was 
hidden in darkness, a darkness that revealed 
the church spire only as the moon rode out 
upon the clouds. 

“ Every path about the house, every field 
and hedge has memories,” said Lady Gilchrist. 
“ One loves them. You will, too, in time. Sir 
Jocelyn wants you to love Burrow as we do. 
In time you will.” 

Lady Gilchrist was standing behind him. 
Two spots of red glowed in her cheeks; her 
eyes were starry with excitement. Peter 
turned and looked at her, looked beyond her 
at the room, and quoted: 

“The four great walls of the New Jeru¬ 
salem.” 

The way he said it brought a smile to Lady 
Gilchrist’s face. 

“ What is it? ” she asked. 

“ Something Pere Formol was always quot¬ 
ing. 4 Perhaps in heaven new chances. One 
more chance. The four great walls of the New 
Jerusalem.’ I wish he had had a better deal.” 


328 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 


Lady Gilchrist sank into the low chair by 
the window. “ You are unhappy about him,” 
she said gravely. “ I used to be, oh, how un¬ 
happy about him I used to be those first years. 
It seemed unfair. I had everything. He had 
nothing. He made me feel that always.” 

Lady Gilchrist was charming, leaning her 
chin on her hands, looking up at Peter. v 

“ As one grows older, my boy,” she said, 
“ life shows us without doubt that the birds 
sing for all. We all have our chances. He 
had his chance, but there was a warp in his na¬ 
ture, some curious twist that kept him from 
getting the things he thought he deserved. 
Perhaps in the future life the twists of our 
nature that keep us from being happy here are 
removed.” 

Peter listened very quietly to her, his eyes 
on her face. 

“ In his work he dwelt always on the bitter¬ 
ness of his lack of recognition, the thought that 
he had desired only one thing in life and that 
this was denied him. I have often thought his 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 329 
own bitterness may have crept into his work. 
Art it seems is subject to so many influences. 
I am your mother. I have lived much in the 
world, and I am convinced that all that we 
make of life comes out of our own hearts.” 

She was quiet—suddenly, with a far-away 
expression in her eyes as if her thoughts had 
flooded into her mind and stopped her speak¬ 
ing. 

“ My beautiful mother! ” Peter said. He 
sat on the arm of her chair and resting his 
cheek against her hair they watched the sky. 
The wind was blowing the vine against the 
window-pane and drops of water were still 
dripping from the boughs of the trees and as 
they watched the dark twilight fancies took 
shape in them. They did not see the frost¬ 
bitten leaves of winter, but north and west and 
south they saw the future and the coming 
spring. 

Lady Gilchidst stole a glance at him. Peter 
was silently looking at her with young, adoring 
eyes. 


330 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

“ Dreams come true,” she said. 

He answered, “ Yes, it is like a fairy tale.” 

Even Sir Jocelyn was proud of his dinner 
table that evening. In the centre was the 
great golden urn, hand-made in the days when 
his ancestors could boast of having their own 
gold and silver smiths. There was the Water¬ 
ford glass that had come from Ireland with 
his great-grandmother, there was the silver 
that had been in his family for years; it was 
thin with that curious thinness that comes 
from the wear of many hands. And to crown 
all as a background for his guests, there were 
the Italian tapestries that had hung on the 
walls of the dining-room at Burrow for a hun¬ 
dred and fifty years. Sir Jocelyn looked down 
the table and catching his wife’s eye, he raised 
his wine-glass to his lips to bid her a silent 
toast. 

Lady Boscawen saw the look. “ You are a 
born landowner, Jossy,” she said to her host. 
“ You have the landowner’s greed for land 
and furnishings.” 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 331 

“ Lady Boscawen is right, sir,” broke in 
Peter; “ only those of us who live abroad 
know what to own a bit of earth at home 
means.” 

Sir Jocelyn turned to Lady Boscawen and 
said to her so that the others could not hear: 
“ Mary and I want Peter to take an interest 
in the place. I want him to have it later, you 
know.” 

Ann Boscawen looked at her host. 

“ We’ve never liked each other really,” she 
said quietly, with her eyes slightly narrowed, 
“ and a compliment from one’s antagonist is 
all the greater, so I tell you, Jocelyn Gilchrist, 
that that is the most generous thing you have 
ever done.” She looked down to see no one 
was listening and then she said irrelevantly, 
“ Middle age has its games. We know so 
much and we believe so little.” 

To her confidence Sir Jocelyn responded: 

“ I wanted to ask Percy here this Christmas, 
but Mary wouldn’t. She thought you 
wouldn’t like it.” 


332 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 


Ann Boscawen shook her head. 

“ It is too late for that. And yet it is Christ¬ 
mas Eve and I will tell you. Never in any 
country has any man seemed to me like 
Percy.” 

Sir Jocelyn nodded. “ His great heart, his 
laugh, his chivalry. He was dear to his 
friends.” 

“ Exactly,” said Ann, “ and a breach is a 
breach. Two obstinacies become an obstinate 
heap for the years to trip over. However, now 
I have Daphne.” 

“ She’s ridiculously like Mary,” said Sir 
Jocelyn, “ and sweet.” 

“ You see it? ” 

“ The moment she came to the light.” 

“ So does Peter,” said Ann Boscawen. “ I 
think really that is why he is so keen.” 

Sir Jocelyn raised his eyebrows. 

“ Peter is keen then? ” 

“ Quite. More than he knows. The will- 
o’-the-wisp stage. The chrysalis stage out of 
which wings grow.” 


THAT WHICH IS PASSED 333 

“ Ah! ” said Sir Jocelyn, “ lucky Peter! ” 

After this the conversation became general. 

In the drawing-room after dinner Ann Bos- 
cawen and Lady Gilchrist sat together. Sir 
Jocelyn and Colonel and Mrs. Forester were 
looking over an old map of the hunting coun¬ 
try, and Peter and Daphne had strayed over 
to the window and were looking out to see 
whether Christmas day would be tine. The 
eyes of the two mothers sitting together fell 
upon their children. 

“ Peter has quite a soft spot for Daphne, 
Mary,” said Ann Boscawen. “ I know the 
signs so well. The fire is lighted. One day 
the match will set it aflame.” 

Lady Gilchrist started. With her old ges¬ 
ture she put her hands to her breast as if to 
defend her heart from the onslaughts of life. 

“ Jocelyn is going to make him his heir,” she 
said slowly. 

Ann Boscawen leaned forward as though 
she, the hard woman of the world, had one 
cause which she must plead. 


334 THAT WHICH IS PASSED 

“ Daphne is my daughter, Mary,” she said 
simply, “ but she is not like me, she is simple 
and generous and loving. Daphne is worthy 
of more than I am.” 

The three older people were still poring over 
their map. Peter and Daphne, shoulders 
touching, were peering into the night, as Lady 
Gilchrist said: 

“ I hope they will find happiness in each 
other. That really is what Peter wants. He 
doesn’t know it, but he wants someone who will 
be just his own.” 

“ We are mothers, Mary,” said Ann Bos- 
cawen gently; “ mothers always have to stand 
aside.” 



44 "l 92 


















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